


Deeper and Deeper into the World

by peridium



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alcohol, BUT TO THE MAX, Bottom Castiel, Bottom Dean Winchester, Canon Divergent, Canon-Typical Violence, Cas in a Leather Jacket, Human Castiel, M/M, Road Trips, Switching, Trademark Overuse of Metaphor, World Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-30
Updated: 2015-10-30
Packaged: 2018-04-28 23:36:06
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 46,812
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5109635
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/peridium/pseuds/peridium
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Metatron breaks free of the library, Castiel’s grace in hand, and disappears, Castiel is left human-- and angry. Angrier than he’ll admit until, late at night, Dean coaxes it out of him: Castiel is pissed and he wants revenge. He wants it enough to pursue Metatron, reckless and without a plan, across the Atlantic with Dean at his side, knowing how badly he wants Dean and how likely it is that one or both of them will die along the way.</p><p>Their search takes them all across the world, from London to Omsk to Tokyo and between. Far from home with no one but each other, Castiel’s grace missing and the Mark still on Dean’s arm, Dean and Castiel find the flimsy barriers between the two of them dissolving. (Canon-divergent from 10.18.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. America, Pt. I

**Author's Note:**

> GOOD GOD WHERE TO BEGIN. I confess my initial motive for writing this fic was a simple and self-indulgent "oooh, I wanna write Cas in a leather jacket on the warpath after Metatron." Things progressed from there. This turned out to be the longest thing I've ever finished, which is a big deal for me.
> 
> A MILLION THANKS to [Bexy](http://hufflepuffdean.tumblr.com) and [Anna](http://dirtyovercoats.com/), my betas/cheerleaders/some of the best friends in the world. And to the whole squad, a source of light and friendship like I never thought I'd find again.
> 
> LAST BUT ONLY BECAUSE SHE IS FAR FROM THE LEAST AND I WANTED A WHOLE PARAGRAPH FOR HER: thanks so so so so _so_ much to [Sandra](http://casblues.tumblr.com), who worked her cute little butt off and made the most beautiful art I could have ever imagined. Seriously, babe, thank you more than I can say. The art masterpost can be found [here](http://casblues.tumblr.com/post/132229258310/deeper-and-deeper-into-the-world-dcbb-2015).
> 
> The title comes from the Mary Oliver poem "The Journey." You can find me on Tumblr at [sunbeamdean](http://sunbeamdean.tumblr.com).

“Poor Castiel.” It’s only from this angle, Castiel a heap on the library floor, that Metatron seems tall or imposing. “Swam so far just to drown in shallow waters. Isn’t it ironic?” During his deliberate pause, Castiel wills him not to bring the reference home. That song makes no sense. Metatron does, of course: “Don’t you think?”

The sigils hold Castiel in place, powerful enough to keep anything but the most impressive archangel still and wracked with pain. It’s infuriating, that symbols scrawled in blood should—

That’s when it comes to him, the reckless and probably stupid idea. Most of his ideas are like that, though. Castiel does it before sensibility can catch up to him, reaching deep into himself and, with a horrible hacking noise, spewing the remainder of the poisoned grace out of his mouth and into the air.

It hovers, then vanishes. Even Metatron’s eyes are wide for the moment before he laughs. “Was that really your best move?”

Castiel sucks in a breath. It scrapes against the insides of his lungs, and he’s breathless and he’s human, but he can move. The sigils affect only angels.

“Well.” Metatron takes a lurching step back. “I had this great routine planned—quotes, very witty and clever—but you do always did love to fuck things up. It’d be poetic if you could trade one grace for another, but…”

Smiling, Metatron hefts a copy of _Don Quixote_.

Castiel’s breath, still so new, tangles itself in his throat. He trips as he tries to run for Metatron, catching himself with his hands flat against the floor.

“Aw, I think it misses you.” Metatron plucks the container of Grace, the frequency of its humming reaching for Castiel with instant familiarity, from the book’s pages. “Too bad I got here first.”

Metatron is gone faster than Castiel can catch his breath. Faster than he can calm the hammering of his human heart, the way his veins seem to buzz with shot after shot of adrenaline.

“Fuck,” he says lowly, relishing the harsh consonants of the word. He gets why the Winchesters like resorting to colloquialisms. He curls his fingers against the dusty wooden floor, fingernails scraping. Even that hurts.

There’s more pain, he knows, but he’s too rattled to figure out what hurts for real and what’s the shock of fresh humanity. _Fuck_ , he thinks one more time for good measure, curling tighter into himself on the floor of the library. Fuck, this was pointless and greedy of him.

There has to be something. Castiel can’t have come here only to lose what little he had left and return to the Winchesters empty-handed.

Fuck.

His ribs aching and his lungs demanding fresh air, Castiel starts digging through the haphazard stacks of books. It’s silent like a tomb in Metatron’s absence. All he can hear is the ringing in his ears telling him that this can’t have been for nothing, that Dean needs him and that he’s going to rise to the occasion of Dean’s need this time around.

Even if he is human again. Even if his grace, what’s left of it, may well be halfway around the world by now. Something hot and bitter rises in his gut and Castiel scrambles to his feet, haphazard stacks of tattered tomes tucked under each arm and determination rising between each frantic beat of his heart.

 

“I found something,” Castiel offers, “that might help. With Dean.”

Quiet otherwise, Sam grunts acknowledgment. It may be disbelief, or disappointment, or Castiel may be reading into his tone and his distraction. Interactions are colored with thousands more possibilities when he can’t read heart rates or monitor brain chemicals.

 _Might help_ isn’t much. It’s not the best form of currency these days, not with Sam so focused and Dean so deeply in denial.

Castiel keeps still as Sam dabs at his wounds, though the brush of the antiseptic ointment stings. He had told himself he would never forget these, the small everyday human pains, but of course the potency of the memory had faded nonetheless. And of course he finds himself gritting his teeth, struggling to stay silent.

There’s nothing too serious. Nothing that had prevented Castiel from maneuvering himself into the Continental and pointing her back toward the bunker. Scrapes, scabs, the rattling of Castiel’s skull.

Sam hasn’t asked many questions, and Castiel is grateful for that. Humiliation—that’s a feeling he’s hardly likely to forget, but it’s stark and painful each time.

“I was selfish,” Castiel says, quiet and even and honest. “I should have waited.”

Sam shrugs, eyes narrowed as he smooths a band-aid over the scrape decorating the awkward bend of Castiel’s elbow. “None of us would have appreciated you dying. Selfish isn’t always a bad thing, y’know.”

Castiel lets out a thoughtful breath, unconvinced.

The exaggeratedly loud _bang_ of the front door opening saves him from response, and then there’s a loud voice: “We’re back, bitches!”

Charlie Bradbury, bearing bags and a radiant smile. Castiel doesn’t need grace to pinpoint her identity; his stomach knots with what he tentatively identifies as anxiety. He wants to make a good impression, and so he suppresses any indication of pain as he rises to his feet and accepts Charlie’s careful hug. “I’m glad to meet you,” he says, sincere.

“About time,” she agrees. For a moment, one in which he can nearly sense her thinly-veiled exhaustion, she leans her forehead against his shoulder. “Heya, Cas.”

She’s injured as well. Castiel wishes he could fix it as easily as he could have a handful of hours ago.

As Sam takes the groceries to the kitchen, Charlie raises her eyebrows. “You okay, big guy?”

Castiel doesn’t feel big—the opposite, actually. He feels diminished. “I have been better,” he answers carefully, “but I’ve been worse, too.”

Charlie laughs, then winces. She covers quickly, but Castiel’s stomach sinks further regardless.

The sound of the door comes again and momentarily eclipses the burn of Castiel’s guilt. Dean, lightly rumpled and balancing pizza boxes in his hands. Castiel’s heart thumps. He reaches for awareness of Dean’s soul—wants to check on him, on the progress of his fight against the Mark—but there’s nothing, only Dean’s quizzical smile and the smell of hot cheese and pepperoni. This is how humans communicate with each other, blind and reaching and making uneducated guesses all the time. Castiel hates it for a bitter moment.

“How you doin’, pal?” Dean slides the boxes onto the table and claps Castiel on the shoulder. It’s a fleeting touch, almost cursory, but Castiel’s breath still catches somewhere in his esophagus. “I hear you’re one of us plebes again.”

“Yes, well.” Castiel shifts his weight from one foot to the other. “That grace couldn’t last within me for too much longer without killing me. And… Sam assured me I wouldn’t be much use to you or Claire dead.”

Dean snorts out a laugh. “Yeah, dude. I mean, do as I say and not as I do, but gettin’ yourself killed in the pursuit of helping people isn’t really all it’s cracked up to be.”

The four of them put on their best attempt at a pleasant evening. Charlie’s presence helps immensely—she’s effervescent, joking away her physical pain and doing everything she can to loop Castiel into the conversation whenever Sam and Dean drift into human territory too obscure for Castiel to follow. Complete knowledge of pop culture in the abstract doesn’t create the ability to make witty conversation in the moment, it seems.

The pizza is delicious, startlingly so. Hot and warm and filling, so good that Castiel devours four slices before he realizes he’s pulling a fifth onto his plate and washing down his last bite with his third bottle of one of the Winchesters’ preferred beers.

The room tilts, and Castiel slumps onto the table. The hum of conversation continues around him and he basks in it, the liveliness. Whether it’s genuine or just a show for his and Dean’s sakes, it’s the closest he’s felt to the constant, companionable hum of his garrison in—well, in years now.

He drifts into it, sleepy awareness of Dean’s voice—a low, soothing rumble—and the counterpoints of Charlie and Sam, higher-pitched, debating him about the fine points of _Star Wars_ canon. Vulnerability haunts him, and this illusion of peace won’t last. But Castiel likes it, the flickers of warmth as Dean glances at him and the easy companionship Charlie offers. So he savors it.

 

Castiel awakens hours later to the weight of a hand warm at his shoulder and breath ruffling the hair that curls around his ears.

“Hey,” Dean says. The whorls of his knuckles brush Castiel’s neck as his hand draws away. “Didn’t wanna wake you up, but there’re comfier places to get some shuteye. I’m guessin’ you feel pretty rough right now.”

“Rough,” Castiel answers. His gaze doesn’t want to focus and his eyelashes feel gritty. “Yeah, that’s one way of putting it.”

“Like shit, then,” Dean offers.

Castiel smiles into the sweat-sticky crook of his own elbow, willing himself to unfold and sit up straight. “I’m human,” he says.

“Yeah, I noticed.” Instead of sitting, Dean looms above him, the soft lines of his face made even softer in the late evening half-light of the bunker kitchen. “What happened? Sam said I should ask you.” Dean’s lip curls for a split second of irritation.

How much to explain? Castiel supposes the vagaries don’t matter now. He props his elbows against the table and studies the tired wrinkles at the corners of Dean’s eyes and mouth. He doesn’t need awareness of Dean’s soul to see the exhaustion of his perpetual battle taking a toll on Dean’s body and mind.

“Metatron,” he says finally, keeping it simple and keeping Sam out of it. “I thought I could force him to help me—to help you. But I was wrong, and I had to get the rest of the grace I did have out before he could kill me entirely.”

“Well, shit.” Dean’s jaw tightens. One of his hands hovers near Castiel’s shoulder before dropping back to Dean’s side. “Sam said you were just kinda banged up.”

“Physically, yes.” It’s as if Dean’s gaze brings some kind of literal heat with it, prickling at the base of Castiel’s throat. He shifts, uncomfortable. “I, ah… brought something for you.”

It’s sweet, lovely relief when Dean smiles, teeth flashing white and eyes softening. “Aw, shucks. Is it a pony?”

“Oh, no.” Castiel widens his eyes deliberately. “I must have misread the Christmas list.”

Dean’s laughing as Castiel leads him out toward the Continental, saying, “Last time I went to all the trouble of making a list, I’m pretty sure it just said ‘economy-size things of salt and a new shotgun,’ but—”

He goes quiet when Castiel opens the trunk and reveals the pile of old books, the dust that’s hanging in a cloud around them. Castiel selects one, the one he hopes will be the key to some relief, and hands it to him. Dean narrows his eyes, turns the thing over in his hands. Castiel imagines he can hear the rasp of Dean’s calluses against the book’s binding.

“Okay,” Dean says with another chuckle. “I got nothing. Is it sexy? I heard Romans were real into porn.”

Castiel sighs, takes the book back from Dean so he can flip through the first few pages, and realizes the trouble. It’s in Latin punctuated by Enochian footnotes. He hadn’t noticed. English comes most naturally to him now, but all languages are easy. The absence of grace can’t take that ability from him.

There hadn’t been time to pick out one candidate, so Castiel had taken anything that looked remotely promising. Anything that spoke of halting curses, of harnessing the power of the soul. Anything to bring Dean a modicum of rest and himself a modicum of redemption. Pulled off to the side of the road later, he’d given himself a break from driving and sorted through until he found this one. Not so old as the text makes it look—only some pretentious fourteenth-century alchemist, overly impressed with himself for learning Enochian and too academically bound up in tradition to write in anything but Latin.

“Metatron took me to a library.” Castiel rubs his thumb against the book’s spine, smelling dust. It’s pleasant. “I meant to force him into helping me cure you.” The word _cure_ seems to draw Dean’s eyes down to his own arm; they’re back at Castiel’s face in moments, though. “As I said, I failed. This isn’t a cure. But it might buy you some time.”

Dean’s features harden. “I’m already buying myself time. You see me killing anyone lately?” _Anyone who didn’t deserve it_ , he means, if Castiel doesn’t miss his mark.

“Okay,” Castiel allows. Dean is fighting hard. Surely that deserves acknowledgment. It’s just that he’s fighting a battle he will inevitably lose. “You’re running as fast as you can. But it’s still chasing you.”

Darkness shutters Dean’s eyes for a moment. “So I keep running.”

“You can’t run forever. This is—a trap for the monster, if you’d like me to keep using the metaphor. To stop it in its tracks. Slow it, anyway. It’ll get free eventually, but not for some time.”

Dean rubs at his elbow. He clears his throat. “Let’s get inside. It’s gonna get cold out here.”

The garage is well-insulated, but Castiel takes the point and lets Dean lead the way into the cocooning warmth of their home. He keeps the book held tight against his body, even takes it into Dean’s bed with him when Dean insists on sleeping on the couch. _For the night_ , Dean says, adamant that Cas deserves a freshly-dusted and furnished bedroom for his first night as a human and waving off any further questions. Maybe, Castiel thinks, he’ll have a room of his own to dust and furnish as he pleases—with time.

 

Sleep doesn’t make sense. Castiel’s whole being yearns for it, all his limbs heavy and his eyes actually aching with exhaustion. The thirty seconds that transpire after he’s sunk into the embrace of Dean’s memory foam and pressed his bruised cheek to the cool pillow feel like the best thirty seconds of his life.

And then he can’t fall asleep, no matter how he wills himself into stillness. No matter how he tries to, as Sam once advised during Castiel’s first liaison with humanity, _think soothing thoughts_.

The light Dean keeps by his bed is too bright, but Castiel uses it anyway. He can’t read in the dark anymore. He flips through the book he took from the Continental, relieved that the non-English languages still trip easily through his mind. Especially Enochian. A small piece of his former home.

It’s simple enough. Witchcraft isn’t his specialty, but he imagines he can probably do it. It’s short, a three-page spell—not complicated, since its purpose is to halt a demonic influence rather than to eradicate it completely.

Castiel is squinting down at the third appendix, dust tickling his nose, when the door flings itself open.

Well. Really, Dean flings the door open. He’s dressed in boxer-briefs and a T-shirt that’s loose from years of wear. For once, the Mark is right there for Castiel to see, and it’s an effort to keep his focus on Dean’s face and the strange glittering light that’s possessed his eyes.

“Hi,” Castiel says. He can’t pretend he was sleeping.

“Hi.” Dean slings a crooked grin Castiel’s way, making a space for himself at the foot of the bed. “Insomnia?”

“I suppose that’s what this is,” Castiel concedes.

Dean laughs. He rakes a hand through the bristles of hair at the back of his neck. “Okay, hear me out.”

Castiel tilts his head, wishing he could read Dean’s intentions with a thought rather than playing at occupying this human skin. Has Dean been drinking? Asking would only throw Dean into defensiveness.

Apparently tired of waiting for an answer, Dean just leans closer and starts in. “Look. You’re pissed, right?”

The obvious answer is _of course_. Castiel hesitates anyway. He’s done anger; he’s worn anger close to his heart and let anger fuel the pulsing of his grace. He’s not sure he wants to hold it so close again.

Dean nudges Castiel, his knee knocking Castiel’s kneecap. “I know you are. That son of a bitch took your grace and now he’s, what, goin’ on a tropical vacation with it?”

Castiel folds his hands in his lap, drawing his limbs in closer to the center of his body. “I don’t know if _pissed_ is the word I would use.”

All assurance and humor, whether it’s alcohol or just a midnight fancy, Dean leans in. “Cas, come on.”

It may serve him to take Dean seriously. Castiel takes in a slow breath, lets it out. “Metatron tricked me,” he says, the words rolling ponderous off his tongue. “I wanted to right wrongs and I perpetuated more of them instead. Of course I’m angry.”

Brightening, Dean cuffs him on the shoulder, just short of gentle. “Any idea where he is?”

Castiel feels his lips press together, tight and tense. They’re unnerving, these unconscious gestures, how they happen almost without his consent. Sam still has Metatron’s grace, but Castiel would nearly rather die before consuming _that_ —and, of course, Dean doesn’t know. He’ll choose his words carefully. “With Hannah at the helm of Heaven, I imagine he hasn’t dared try and return.”

“Meaning… what? He’s bumming around on Earth somewhere?” Inexplicably, Dean’s smile grows.

“Probably. Hopefully.”

Dean’s fingertips brush Castiel’s thigh; it’s through layers of thick bedsheet, but Castiel’s veins tighten and thrum nonetheless. Oh, he’s so easy for this mess of a man.

“Cas.” Dean’s breath ghosts hot against Castiel’s jawline. “You wanna get out of here?”

Castiel stares. Dean’s cheeks flush pink.

“I, uh.” Dean clears his throat, thumping himself on the chest as if that will get the embarrassment out faster. “I didn’t mean—that’s not.”

The interlude eases the air between them. Castiel dog-ears a page of his book and slides it under the pillow for later. “What did you mean?”

For a moment or two, Dean fidgets. He’s always restless, but these small, anxious movements aren’t like him. He twists his fingers in the sheets, rubs at the reddened Mark where it sits too easy on the skin of his arm. “I mean, get out of _here_.” He jerks his chin nonspecifically.

Castiel’s eyes widen. In counterpoint to Dean’s nervous energy, he stills. “The bunker? Dean. You don’t mean to run away.”

Dean’s nose wrinkles. “Well, it sounds stupid when you put it like that.” One of his hands slows its movements and curls around the Mark, his knuckles whitening as his fingers dig into his own flesh. Castiel wonders if he’s aware he’s doing it. “I’m sick of this. I’m sick of being the invalid.”

Trying to tread carefully, Castiel shifts perhaps a half-inch closer. “You are sick, though. Literally. In your soul.”

Dean’s jaw tightens. That was the wrong thing to say. “You can stop it, right? For a little while, or whatever.”

“I think so. Maybe. What does that have to do with—”

“Let’s get on a plane,” Dean says, and his cheeks are pale, but he’s determined. Castiel realizes it then, how serious Dean is about this plan, if he’s willing to board an airplane. “Or—a train, or I don’t fuckin’ know. Find this piece of shit and get your grace back. You wanna, right? Don’t tell me you don’t want your fist to connect with his mouth. He’s so in love with himself, I bet he wouldn’t be too hard to track if we talk to the right people.”

Castiel’s fingers twitch where they’re laced over one another in his lap. “I don’t know if I’d put it that way.”

Dean sighs. His voice drops, like he’s sharing a secret. “Look at it this way. You get your grace back, you’re all powered up. That puts you in a way better position to deal with this ugly-ass thing on my arm.”

The somersaults that Castiel’s thought process does are curious. Dean is lying—sort of. That is, Dean doesn’t particularly care about Castiel using his grace to find him a cure, and that’s obvious enough. He’s trying to coax Castiel into something selfish with the illusion of selflessness. Lying, essentially.

And Castiel chooses to believe him. To lie to himself. It feels good.

“Okay,” he says. One hand drops to caress the worn cover of the spell book where it’s tucked against his thigh. “I want to leave a note for Sam and Charlie. But okay. Let’s go.”

His reward is a grin, splitting Dean’s face and making Dean’s eyes shine, and everything is worth that.

 

The sun comes up as they drive, Dean’s fingers restless against the Impala’s steering wheel. Castiel has seen billions of sunsets, but this is one of his first as a human. The first with Dean at his side. He’s too aware of every shift of Dean’s body, bouncing left knee and tensing shoulders.

They’re headed to Europe. Castiel would have said yes to anywhere, an uncomfortable fact that’s haunting the back of his awareness. It’s humiliating, he suspects, how readily he will go anywhere to make Dean happy. Dean claims he knows people there who can help them track a rogue angel, but Castiel isn’t so sure. Thus far, the Winchesters’ network has never extended outside of the continental United States. Dean may be lying or he may merely be overstating with the phrase _old buddies_ , but Castiel finds he doesn’t care as much as he should.

Castiel rolls down the window and leans out, squinting against the rushing of crisp morning air. It brings tears to the corners of his eyes, but he wants to see everything: roadside billboards advertising amusement parks and warning against going to Hell; dilapidated barns with their roofs caving in and the paint peeling from their doors; fields of crops tinted a whole palette of colors as the sky undergoes its morning routine.

This countryside has to wake up each morning and go about the business of ordinary life. Maybe Castiel can learn to do the same.

“Whoa,” Dean’s saying, the car slowing. Dean’s fingertips slide against Castiel’s cheek, rough skin but a gentle touch. “Whoa, was it something I said?”

“Hm?” Castiel turns. They’ve pulled into a spray of gravel at the side of the road and Dean’s face is so close that Castiel can see the amber-colored freckles half-hidden by his eyelashes most of the time.

Dean huffs out a breath, shaky, his hand still hovering near Castiel’s face. “You’re crying, you freak.”

Castiel blinks. So he is. His eyes are wet; his cheeks, too. He rubs hastily at his face with the heels of his palms, his fingers brushing Dean’s for the split second before Dean pulls back away. “I’m okay,” he says.

“Nah.” The dismissal rolls easily off Dean’s tongue, kind rather than derisive. “You’re not.”

Castiel swallows his instinctive argument. _Okay_ is what he always is. It’s what the Winchesters always are. “You’re right,” he says, earning a flickering half-smile from Dean. “But I’m not really crying, either. It was the wind.”

Dean _humph_ s, obviously unconvinced, but he pats Castiel’s shoulder and moves back into driving position. They have at least a hundred miles left until they reach the Kansas City airport, and Dean seems possessed with determination to make it onto a plane before Sam and Charlie awaken and find the two of them gone from the bunker.

Castiel resettles himself, his boot brushing the duffel bag of things Dean put together for him before they left. A convenience-store toiletry set, secondhand clothes that used to belong to Dean or even John, and the first three paperbacks Dean could pluck from his semi-secret stash of reading material (a Terry Pratchett novel that’s somewhere in the depths of Castiel’s mental database, a fantasy novel boasting impressively hideous cover art, and a thriller with the cover torn off). He must know that Castiel aches for distraction.

Of course, he doesn’t know that Castiel is distracted enough as it is by the shift of muscles in Dean’s arms each time he turns the Impala, the rising light as it silhouettes the shapes of Dean’s profile, and the burning in his gut as he wishes he could reach into Dean’s soul and soothe the burgeoning unhappiness the way he once could.

 

Dean hates flying. Castiel had known this the way some part of his mind knows nearly all of Dean’s eccentricities, but the knowledge hardly prepared him for the reality of Dean’s phobia.

The reality, currently, is that Dean looks like he might flee to the bathroom at the back of the plane and vomit at any moment. And they haven’t even left the ground.

“Dean,” Castiel says. Level, even, confident. “It’s incredibly unlikely that anything will happen to disrupt this plane. Domestic flights are especially—”

“Shut up,” Dean groans. His knuckles are ghostly white where he’s hanging onto the armrest. “I’m gonna deck you if I hear another statistic about how we’re _probably_ not gonna die so, like, don’t worry, be happy, man.”

“I can start singing if that would help,” Castiel offers.

Dean laughs, which is something, at least. “What, you any good?”

“Oh, no.” Castiel could touch Dean’s hand, try to soothe the zinging of his nerves by stroking the soft valleys between his scarred knuckles. It would take almost no effort, and Dean is so distracted by his own fear that he might not remember his own admonishments about personal space and physical contact between men. “No, I’m not good at all. The humor might be distracting.”

Dean’s lips twitch upward; he doesn’t smile, but the expression comes close. “We should probably spare the fine people of this plane, huh?”

Castiel glances to either side of them, dubious. The businesswoman trapped in their window seat is quite efficient at ignoring their conversation. Across the aisle, two young blonde women in their twenties are wrapped up in each other, talking in soft voices and laughing every few sentences. He and Dean are effectively invisible.

With obvious effort, Dean breathes out in a long rush of warm air. Castiel licks his lips and turns his face away, but he smells old coffee and the bitter tang of Dean’s anxiety anyway.

“We won’t die,” Castiel tells him. He smooths his thumb across the knob of Dean’s wrist and then the taut back of Dean’s hand. “Not today.”

“Yeah.” Dean musters another imitation of a smile. His fingers flutter against the plastic of the armrest, but he doesn’t say anything, not even when Castiel draws a curious fingertip along the surprisingly soft side of Dean’s index finger. “Yeah, I always meant to die punching a smug douchebag angel in the face instead of… whatever.”

The businesswoman to Dean’s left pushes her earbuds more firmly into her ears.

Singing may be out of the question, but once the plane has pitched itself into the air and Dean has taken to humming off-key under his breath with his eyes squeezed shut, Castiel turns determined to ease the passage of hours until they reach Atlanta.

“Here.” He pulls the spellbook out of his bag—they had checked only one suitcase, full of weapons concealed in layers and layers of tape and butcher paper and giftwrap disguised as presents for nonexistent foreign relatives, Dean’s mistrust of airlines much too potent to part with the rest of his things for so long—and drops it onto the tray table in front of Dean. It jostles the remnants of Dean’s third coffee.

Dean jolts upright. His eyes are rimmed with red, his eyelashes sticky with exhaustion. “Huh?”

“I know you weren’t asleep,” Castiel says. He leans close enough to start rifling through the book’s pages. “I could still hear you. Was that REO Speedwagon, by the way?”

Dean coughs. “What happens on the terrifying death plane stays on the terrifying death plane. This your monster trap thing?”

“Yes,” Castiel says with as much confidence as he can muster.

“And this is obviously the best time for whipping out some witchcraft on your second day as a human.”

“Only my second day this time around.” Castiel squints down at a page, his temple brushing the shoulder seam of Dean’s jacket. “The sum total of my time as a human is longer.”

“Whatever. I think my skepticism stands.”

“How much time do we have left on this flight?”

Dean squints at his wristwatch, bleary. “I dunno. ’bout an hour?”

They have a three-hour layover at the airport in Atlanta, from which their eventual flight to London will leave. Castiel ignores the impulse to lean his forehead against Dean’s warm, solid shoulder; instead, he nods and draws the book closer to his own seat again. “Can you do some things for me while we’re there?”

Dean’s expression shifts into quizzicality, but that’s an improvement on nauseated unhappiness. Giving Dean a task will, Castiel believes, help—even in his daily hunter’s life, Dean is at his happiest when he’s bustling around the bunker, tidying and straightening and tending to the small chores of an everyday life.

“Yeah.” Dean looks heartened, and Castiel is heartened in turn. “Yeah, lay it on me.”

 

The plane that’s to deliver them across the Atlantic is larger and more luxurious than the one that took them from Kansas to Georgia. Castiel finds himself wiggling his feet in the space he’s been given, just because he can. Dean catches him and laughs, some of his color returning to his cheeks.

Castiel shrugs, unapologetic. “This is nicer. I like it.”

“Geez, a couple days without angel wings and you’re totally slumming it?”

Castiel raises his eyebrows. His shoulder blades register a faint itch. “My wings have been nonfunctional for a long time, Dean.”

Dean cringes, his grip on the bag of ingredients tightening with a low rustling noise. “Right, yeah.” Neither of them had switched their cell phones back on during the layover, selfishly prolonging the necessity of answering Sam and Charlie’s inevitable questions.

“I do miss them,” Castiel says. He takes the bag from Dean, pulls out the plastic-wrapped stack of Styrofoam bowls so he can work on tearing it open. His fingernails feel clumsy and useless, but eventually they catch and the packaging comes loose. “We could have been there and back before Charlie and your brother noticed we had gone in the first place.”

“Kinda goes against the whole point of this.”

“What’s that? For you to test your phobia via exposure therapy?”

Dean scowls. “Lemme know when you’re not gonna be a jerk.”

They lapse into silence. Castiel works with his hands. It’s simple enough with the right tools, makeshift though they may be: tipping the fast-food container of salt into one of the bowls, carving symbols into the pliant material of the Styrofoam with a ballpoint pen, crushing a few vitamin supplements into a fine dust with the cap of the bottle in which they were purchased. He’s half-braced for the tingle in his grace that should warn him against dabbling in witchcraft, but there’s nothing—just the discordant background noise of Dean’s humming and the industrial noises of the airplane keeping itself aloft.

“Seriously?” Dean says when he sees Castiel’s handiwork.

Castiel shrugs, a hint of a challenge in the gesture. “You know very well that glamor doesn’t make a spell.”

Dean snorts out a laugh. “Some of the witches I’ve met never got that memo.”

“Hold still.”

The elderly man occupying their window seat this time around snores. Small blessings, Castiel supposes.

The spell will hold the Mark in stasis, but it makes no claims at erasing it or stopping it for good. Still, it will do for now, and Castiel takes a deep breath before he wraps his hands around Dean’s wrist.

Dean’s pulse flutters under the pads of Castiel’s fingers.

Castiel waits until the flight attendants have completed a pass through their aisle and reassumed their seats near the bathrooms and refreshment carts. He strikes a match and drops it into the bowl, watches the flare of unnaturally white light, murmurs the Latin under his breath.

Dean watches him the whole time, unmoving. If Castiel couldn’t feel the clamminess of his skin and the unsteadiness of his heart rate, he might think Dean calm. He imagines that the heat of the Mark is reaching for him, stretching out and hoping to stop him as the magic does its work.

“ _Finis_ ,” Castiel breathes, and the scattering of powder flares. The edges of the bowl droop, melting slightly. The distortion barely skirts the ring of symbols.

Dean licks his lips and flexes his fingers. Castiel is improbably distracted by both, and by the way Dean’s teeth dig into his lower lip for a moment.

“What’s it supposed to feel like?”

“I don’t know,” Castiel says dryly. “I’ve never taken on the Mark of Cain.”

Dean rolls his eyes, but Castiel catches the barest flicker of a smile crossing his expression.

“Let me know,” Castiel tells him. He’s still holding Dean’s wrist, unsure how to let go without drawing attention to the touch.

They pass an uncomfortable thirty minutes, Dean’s eyes trained blankly on the sitcom playing on the TVs above their heads. He wonders if Dean is half as aware of the space between them as Castiel is. The faint pressure of Castiel’s fingers against his skin and the hoped-for containment of the Mark’s influence.

“I dunno,” Dean murmurs. He shifts a little, and Castiel lets him go at last, reluctant.

“You don’t know?”

Dean bestows a baleful look upon him. “Say something that’ll piss me off.”

Castiel feels his own brow furrow. “Kirk was an ineffective captain,” he offers, “and Han Solo absolutely did not shoot first.”

Dean’s eyes widen in what appears to be genuine shock. “ _Dude_ ,” he says, his voice pitched high as it always is when he’s forgotten to modulate himself. “Dude.” He stops, then, and his mouth twitches into a smile, his eyes cast downward. His eyelashes make light shadows on the planes of his cheekbones. “Good one. And hey.” He holds up his right hand, swivels it experimentally on the axis of his wrist. “I don’t feel like murderin’ you.”

Castiel laughs. “Did you feel like murdering me before?”

That wasn’t the right thing to say—Dean glances to the side, pretending that the rusty wristwatch of their seat companion is abruptly fascinating. “No,” he says, a beat or two too late.

“Dean,” Castiel says, alarmed.

“Hey, no,” Dean says, now speaking too quickly. “No, I mean, not—not like—I just sometimes had these dreams, y’know, and then when I was up against Cain, it got—”

Castiel reaches to hold Dean’s wrist again, aligning the pad of his thumb with the heightening hammering of Dean’s pulse. It’s a ghostly imitation of feeling Dean’s soul, but it does the trick: letting him know that Dean is alive, without a doubt. “You don’t have to explain it to me,” he says. “I know about thinking and doing things you don’t mean.”

It’s silent between them. Dean nods, and Castiel squeezes his wrist, gentle.

Improbably, Dean yawns, tears springing to the crinkled corners of his eyes. “Shit,” he mumbles, “what time is it?” An inexpert deflection, but Castiel will let him have it.

Castiel shrugs. “I don’t know. Nighttime here. Closing in on morning at our destination. I can’t tell time without a clock anymore.”

Dean sighs, slumping and then sliding down in his seat. “Wake me up when there’s food.”

“Okay,” Castiel says.

He doesn’t, though. They miss the food cart coming around because they’re both asleep, Castiel’s head pillowed on Dean’s shoulder at an awkward angle. He’s awoken only by the smell of peanuts from across the aisle, the rustling of foil, and Dean grunting.

“Ow.” Castiel clutches at the back of his own neck and scowls. “Your shoulder appears to have disagreed with my tendons. Or vice versa.”

Dean laughs groggily and elbows Castiel in the ribs across their armrest. “No, your neck just got fucked up. It happens when you sleep in weird places.”

Castiel _has_ slept in weird places—the Gas-N-Sip wasn’t the height of comfort—but he’d always been horizontal. Still, there’s lingering heat in his cheek and side from the way he’d been curled into Dean’s side, and not even the pang of pain as he cocks his head from side to side can make him regret their shared nap.

They doze on and off for the rest of the flight, scrounging for the airline-provided snacks when they can. Dean plugs in a pair of dingy earbuds, shuts his eyes, and listens to the entirety of a movie in Danish without bothering to read the subtitles. Castiel reads half of the formulaic fantasy novel Dean packed for him; it’s not _Lord of the Rings_ , but it’s extremely derivative, and Castiel keeps feeling as though he’s read it before. Frustrating, as he’s read neither this nor the actual _Lord of the Rings_ , only had the relevant knowledge slotted into his brain without his consent.

Dean sleeps fitfully. REM, Castiel assumes. It’s frustrating, lacking the ability to tell for sure. He wants to touch Dean’s face, to feel the restless movements of his eyeballs beneath the thin skin of their lids. Maybe that would tell him more. Maybe that would distract him from the discomfort of his own muscles; the irritation of making trips to the cramped airplane bathroom; the shooting pain every time he moves his head the wrong way.

Castiel keeps his hands to himself, sleeping instead with his head pillowed on the tray table. It leaves too little room for his shoulders and spine, and by the time the final announcement that they’re landing echoes throughout the aisles, every part of his body is in some form of pain or discomfort. Humanity sucks, as Dean would probably say.


	2. Great Britain

London is gray. That is Castiel’s first impression as they emerge from Heathrow, half his attention devoted to Dean’s grumbling about their rude customs officer and the other half to the slate color of the sky, the cold politeness of the crowd as it slips past him.

He’s seen this city before. He’s seen it grow from the ground up, seen it rise to prominence, watched detachedly as humans crawled through and out from its Underground in search of more and better.

Dean stops behind him, his nose wrinkling. He’s hauling their single large suitcase, the collar of his military jacket turned up against the slight chill in the air. He’s starkly American against their English backdrop; it’s nothing Castiel would have noticed before he spent years on Earth, but Dean stands out. He’s practically garish here, his free hand shoved in his pocket and his legs bowed as if he expects the endless plains of the United States to follow him and give him room to stretch wherever he goes.

Castiel is terribly fond of him. He smiles at Dean, whose scowl deepens endearingly.

In a gesture of self-sacrifice, Castiel is the first to switch his cell phone back on. It’s quiet for a moment, and then the notifications crowd the screen—ten text messages, which he doesn’t read. Three voicemails, which he doesn’t listen to. Dean will almost definitely have even more, but he’s stubbornly holding out.

Dean walks. Castiel follows. They slip into the crowd as best they can, Dean too tall and broad and Castiel feeling just this side of too alien to blend in, but no one spares them a second glance. 

It’s the middle of the day and Castiel is exhausted. Not sleepy, but exhausted. Dean’s eyes are sticky with the remnants of sleep, but despite that he seems just as tired.

“Are we meeting your friends?” Castiel asks, nudging a pile of damp leaves with the toe of his boot. They slide off the sidewalk and into the street.

Dean pulls an uncertain face that confirms Castiel’s suspicions about the closeness of this acquaintance. Still, Dean is charming and a talented liar when he wants to be. “Haven’t heard back,” Dean says.

“You haven’t checked your messages,” Castiel points out mildly, “but maybe we should rest first. Jet lag, right?”

Dean grumbles indistinctly, rolling his shoulders. They must ache; Castiel knows his do. When Dean picks up the pace, shoving his way more gracelessly past the throngs of soberly-dressed Londoners, Castiel takes that as a yes and falls back into step behind him. He’s not fond of crowds, but with Dean taking the lead, there’s a path clear for him and all Castiel has to do is stay close.

 

Obviously uncomfortable with the non-American accents surrounding them, Dean checks them into a hostel with his shoulders squared and his spine straight, tense. Castiel resolves to step in the next time—especially if next time involves a language other than English.

Because it’s the middle of the day, the hostel is nearly deserted. They sling their belongings onto two narrow bunk beds—Castiel claims the top bunk—and Dean sits, heavy, his hands curled around his kneecaps. Their sole fellow traveler, a dark-skinned young man wearing fingerless gloves and with headphones clamped securely down over his ears, stirs for a moment, then goes still.

“Dean.” Castiel sits next to him. Possibly too close—their time in close proximity while airborne has skewed his perception of Dean’s personal space rules.

“Yup.” Dean scrubs his face with his hands. “Bet you’re pretty bushed too, huh?”

“Yup,” Castiel echoes. This kind of everyday tiredness had taken him by surprise last time, too. Rather than weariness of the spirit, it’s physical: his eyelids drooping, his muscles urging him to let them be for just a little while. “A few hours couldn’t hurt, right?”

Dean laughs without very much humor. He knocks his shoulder against Castiel’s, and the pit of Castiel’s stomach warms. “All right, but you gotta hold us to that, okay? Set an alarm or something.”

It may be simple bullheadedness that infects Castiel. He nods, fingers working on his cell phone for a moment, but his reward is this: he stretches out along the bed Dean has claimed, claiming the side closest to the wall, kicking his shoes off and shutting his eyes before he can take in Dean’s expression in reaction.

“Uh.” Dean swallows.

Castiel is tired, and he considers himself entitled after agreeing to go along with Dean on this ridiculous trip in the first place. He nestles into the thin bedclothes, pillows his head on his hands, and doesn’t respond.

“Okay,” Dean says. His voice drops and gentles, and the warmth of him presses all along Castiel’s side.

Now, sleep rises easily to envelop Castiel’s mind. He dreams, he thinks, small snatches of imagery and feeling and nothing more sticking in his memory afterward. Dean is there, insubstantial but his hands sure as they hang onto Castiel’s hips and his smile fond as he presses his mouth to Castiel’s neck.

He had dreams like this the last time he was human, too. And the time before that, during the Apocalypse that never came to be. Castiel had awoken in the back seat of the Impala, groggy and disoriented and distantly aroused. It had taken him a few minutes too many to realize that Dean hadn’t truly kissed him or touched his face the way his wishful mind had concocted for him.

Now, at least, he expects it. Vast landscapes of flight, half-solid memories of Heaven that can’t manifest in his human memory, strange and repetitive reiterations of the mundane tasks that had plagued him at the Gas-N-Sip, and Dean. Callused hands, wide and easy smiles, thick and gentle fingers touching Castiel’s bare skin without hesitation until the dream inevitably dissolves into a haze of contentment and frustrated longing.

Castiel has wanted Dean for so long that he can hardly imagine how it would feel _not_ to. Sometimes it burns a little, turning sour in his gut, but usually it’s only a fact, like the millennia-away collapse of the universe in its inevitability.

For the first time, however, Dean is there when Castiel wakes up.

They’re not entwined, exactly—but there’s something to be said for the way Dean’s arm is flung across Castiel’s chest, his fingers curled loosely against Castiel’s waist. The evenness of Dean’s breathing, his jaw slack and his lips parted.

Castiel shifts, then hisses through his teeth when he becomes aware of the erection pressing against the fly of his borrowed jeans. It throbs. Castiel’s palms itch with the desire to reach for Dean; he put this broad, capable body back together, and now all he wants is to feel it with human hands. Dean makes a gruff noise and nestles his face more firmly against the pillow, one sock-clad foot twitching.

Every part of Castiel hurts a little, inside and out. He does his best to squirm away from Dean, to push himself up on his elbow without drawing attention to himself, but there’s almost no space, and Dean’s thigh knocks solid and tempting against the straining curve of his cock. And Castiel, so used to no touch but cursory nights alone with his own hands, whimpers.

In an instant, Dean is awake. His eyes are bright, wide with concern. “What—?”

Castiel clears his throat. “Good evening, Dean.”

Dean blinks once, then twice more. He glances down; his cheeks color as his eyes flick back up. “Gee, it really is a good evening, huh?”

Reassured—at least Dean is making jokes—Castiel rolls his eyes. He’s still poised, half-looming on his knees over Dean’s sleep-warm form. “Don’t act like this doesn’t happen to you.”

“Hey, I never said it didn’t.” Dean waggles his eyebrows, his gaze trained resolutely on Castiel’s face. “Need me to clear out?”

Castiel sighs. “It’ll go down on its own. Anyway,” he adds, grasping at the first excuse to change the subject before he succumbs to the fascination of Dean wetting his lips with his tongue as they look at each other, “I’m hungry. It’s dinnertime here.”

It’s a way out, so Dean takes it. They bicker on their way out, Dean too stubborn and set in his ways to try the curry place nearby and Castiel adamant that it’s ridiculous to start traveling the world without willingness to eat non-American food.

“It’s not that,” Dean says, scowling, “we’re just not even in India. Isn’t this s’posed to be the land of fish and chips or something?”

“Chicken tikka masala is the national dish of England,” Castiel counters.

Castiel gets his way. They end up tucked into a corner booth, fake velvet curtains shielding them from the rest of the establishment as their waiter smiles obsequiously and offers them further variations on the menu.

In the ensuing silence as Dean pretends to contemplate his options, Castiel asks, “Do you actually know anyone here?”

Dean shoots him an automatically defensive look. “Hey, yeah! I mean, depends on your definition of _know_ , I guess.”

Castiel purses his lips and doesn’t dignify that with a response.

“I do,” Dean says, obviously wounded, sulking. His boot knocks against Castiel’s shin under the table, but neither of them comments on the moment of physical contact. “I mean, my dad did. A while ago. I just kinda gambled that we could figure out the rest once we find ’em.”

“And,” Castiel prompts, “do you have a plan for finding them?”

“I got an address.” Dean shrugs. “If they’re not there, we’ll ask around.”

Dean approaches infinitely variable human transactions like this as if they’re easy, as if setbacks are no more than irritating parasites to be swept aside. Castiel is envious, or perhaps just impressed. He’s no less stubborn, but he lacks Dean’s occasional knack for charm and finesse.

“Okay,” Castiel says, allowing Dean to win this particular round. “Tomorrow.”

The concession earns him one of Dean’s smiles; Dean doles them out in abundance, but Castiel finds that no matter how many he receives, each time he feels just as special—blessed, nearly—as the first. Dean is good at that.

They eat in relative silence after that, but it’s comfortable. Dean eyes every new plate that arrives with suspicion, then digs in with gusto anyway, going so far as to lick the tines of his fork clean before the waiter takes the metal dishes away. Castiel imagines that they’ve captured this one nebulous day, stretched between multiple time zones and across two plane trips, and claimed it for themselves. Not until tomorrow will Dean deign to check in with their no-doubt-worried family back home; not until tomorrow will they throw themselves back into the ostensible purpose of their journey.

Walking back to the hostel, Dean’s steps are broad and relaxed. He touches Castiel’s shoulder with his fingertips before seeming to think better of it and tucking his thumb through the belt loop of his jeans. It’s not as if Castiel didn’t register every one of Dean’s touches as a fully-fledged angel, it’s just that now he’s… free of other distractions. No angel radio, no distant thrum of grace and the rustling feathers of his battered true form.

Nothing but the blink-and-he’d-miss-it brush of Dean’s fingers against Castiel’s T-shirt, the ridges of his fingerprint catching minutely on the worn cotton.

Dean doesn’t ask about whether Castiel is going to use the top bunk that night. He steps to the side and lets Castiel slide under the covers in his boxers, his spine pressing against the coolness of the hostel wall. They’re surrounded by other travelers, some asleep and some quietly attentive to their books or technology, and so they don’t speak.

It’s a small bed; they can’t help but touch. Dean rolls so he faces away from Castiel, but that leaves Castiel eyeing the dimly-lit back of Dean’s neck, the fine golden hairs that lead into the clean line of his haircut. Castiel has seen Dean do this himself, an electric razor and thirty minutes in the bathroom—it’s an efficient process, one nearly military in its exactitude.

“’night, Cas,” Dean says, his vowels long and so American in contrast with their location, “I’ll most likely kill you in the morning.”

Castiel catches the reference and he smiles, the expression almost pressed to the gentle slope at the top of Dean’s spine. “Goodnight, Dread Pirate Winchester.”

Dean’s grin is nearly audible. Castiel holds the thrill of his own satisfaction in his chest for a moment, then another, before he releases the feeling and opens his senses to the silence of sleep.

 

“Think I should try the doorbell one more time?”

Castiel considers. From shadowing the Winchesters, he’s become accustomed to the American hunting network—abandoned cabins with hundred-mile stretches between them, old shotguns and machetes hung from the walls as points of pride. In England, he remembers, it’s closer nearly to the Men of Letters; small clusters of knowledgeable humans holing themselves up in the catacombs of old buildings and trading their secrets in back alleys.

“Try a code,” Castiel says.

Dean looks at him with blatant skepticism. “ _A_ code?”

Castiel shrugs. “Shave and a haircut, two bits?”

Despite the theatrical sigh Dean heaves, Castiel notes the small smile that tugs at his mouth. After a moment’s obligatory reluctance, Dean taps out the rhythm using the doorbell, a slightly rusted metal thing that curves into the shape of a claw against the wall of the dilapidated office building.

At first, there’s nothing. Castiel can just _tell_ that Dean is preparing to break out his customary _I told you so_ when the doorbell buzzes loudly and the front door creaks open.

“Hullo!”

The greeting is so chipper, all the two of them can do is blink like newborn animals thrust into the light for the first time.

The man smiles, tossing a shock of dark hair back from his forehead. He’s of Asian descent, short and handsome, and he offers a hand to both Dean and Castiel at the same time, so they both hover awkwardly before Dean launches into a smile and shakes his hand with vigor. “Hi,” Dean says brightly. “I was just startin’ to think no one was there.”

“Hello,” Castiel adds. “We’re hunters from the United States of America.”

Their host produces another smile. “I’m Daniel Kang. You’ve got to be Dean Winchester, right? You sent us that… interesting email a couple of days ago, didn’t you.” He tilts his head at Castiel, an apologetic gesture. “You, I’m not…?”

Dean laughs, clapping his hand between Castiel’s shoulder blades in a way that would be strictly filial if not for the two endless seconds of his palm lingering warmly. “This is my buddy Cas. Partner, actually—hunting in pairs is kinda the only way not to get eaten in a real hurry, at least where we’re from.”

“We’ve had a terrible rash of poltergeists lately,” Daniel says, stepping to one side so that Dean and Castiel can follow him into the hallway. It’s lit by sconces, little balls of orange light that illuminate their way past doors covered in peeling paint and fading plaques. “My husband and I hunt together most of the time and lately I wouldn’t even think of going without him. Better safe than sorry, mm?”

Dean’s guilty swallow is audible, at least to Castiel’s ears. “Yeah.” He clears his throat. “Sometimes, me and my brother—anyway, cool digs you got here.”

Now it’s Daniel’s turn to laugh, pausing in their trek toward who-knows-where. “It used to be a school, believe it or not. When we inherited it, it was haunted. A little ghost told me that mischievous students used to drive the administration mad ringing that doorbell just the way you did.”

“Is that why you opened it for us?” Castiel asks.

Daniel shrugs. “Maybe. You’ve got an interesting reputation, Mr. Winchester. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to respond to your message.”

Dean pulls a sheepish face. His effort to exude charm is clearly conscious, but no less effective for that transparency. “We left in a hurry, so I wouldn’t’ve seen it even if you did.”

“Well,” Daniel says, “what’s done is done. You’re here; can I offer you something to drink?”

The atmosphere seems to settle in the wake of Daniel’s acknowledgment. No, they’re not trusted, but Castiel would have been surprised if they’d been welcomed with open arms. Dean suffers through a cup of black English breakfast tea while Castiel contemplates the physics of how his milk suffuses his own beverage. They sit in slightly dusty silence as Daniel bustles around them until a handsome dark-skinned man bursts in through the doorway.

“Oh, there you are.” Daniel beams and rises on his tiptoes to peck the newcomer on the cheek.

This man, so handsome and with such impeccably good hair that even Castiel finds himself unavoidably impressed, trains a vague smile upon them. “Dean Winchester and—Cas, right?”

Castiel nods, hardly eager to draw attention to himself. “Hi.”

“We’re trying to track an angel,” Dean says without preamble. Castiel notices that the smallest hint of a flush has risen to Dean’s cheeks as a reaction to their company, but he doesn’t dare to point it out—Dean gets flustered when people notice his obvious attraction to men. “The scribe of God, actually.”

“Ah!” Two sets of eyebrows go up in unison. Yes, Castiel can see that they’ve been married for more than a few years.

“Metatron,” Daniel says.

Dean scowls. “I friggin’ hate that guy, but yeah. Metatron. He’s got something pretty important that we really need.”

As Daniel and his husband examine them, Castiel feels certain that they know. Not everything, perhaps, but some measure of his own origin and his investment in finding Metatron before… before what? Before it’s too late for Dean, in Castiel’s case. Dean may want to die during this fight, but Castiel will die before letting him.

“We might be able to help,” Daniel’s husband concedes. “I’m, ah…” His gaze darts toward Daniel, who smiles. “I’m not entirely human,” he continues, “and I do hear things sometimes. There’ve been some rumblings, but I’d like a chance to confirm with my sources. Would you mind sticking around for a few hours?”

“Dude,” Dean says, “sure.”

“Especially,” Castiel adds, “if you’d allow us access to your library. I’m very interested to see it.” For his own sake and Dean’s.

Daniel’s husband smiles, and his pupils thin, then thin some more. Castiel makes a mental note to tell Dean later—this isn’t a man at all, but a naga. A friendly one, so says the evidence. He wonders idly what the creature looks like when he sheds his human skin and allows his reptilian form to take over. It explains the care with which he and Daniel have tiptoed around revealing his name; Daniel likely knows it, but the naga wouldn’t want to grant anyone else the power of knowing his true name. _Not entirely human_ indeed.

“Yes,” the naga says, and Castiel isn’t sure if he’s imagining the increased sibilance in his voice. “So long as you don’t damage anything.”

Daniel steps in, then, his smile perhaps slightly more forced. “Good luck, dear.” He kisses his spouse’s cheek and the two of them bustle off behind a door whose hinges creak as it moves.

Barely one beat of silence later, Dean laughs. “Geez,” he says, “they’re pieces of work.”

“They’re being kind,” Castiel ventures.

Dean makes a noncommittal noise. He’s rubbing his thumb against the handle of his teacup; both their cups look comically small in their hands, Dean’s exceptionally delicate against the worn-in calluses of Dean’s knuckles and palms. “I think they’re just bein’ curious. Sounds like my reputation precedes me.”

“Maybe.” Castiel wonders if he could get away with touching Dean’s hands to still their nervous motions. “Mine would, if I told them the truth. Actually, I think it might have anyway.”

Dean’s lip curls. “I guess it was pretty far-fetched wishful thinking to imagine I could actually get away from all the shit I’ve done if I just ran away across the ocean.”

It’s the first time Dean has acknowledged this trip for what it no doubt is—fleeing. Castiel throws his caution to the wind and grips the meat of Dean’s forearm between thumb and forefinger. The muscles tense. It’s Dean’s right arm.

“You can’t get away from it,” Castiel says, “that’s true. But you deserve a break from feeling so much guilt about it.”

Dean sets the teacup down on the claw-footed table a half-yard in front of them. Castiel follows suit. “Think you’re pretty overdue for a break, too.”

Castiel holds up his free hand palm-up, indicating the room around them. “Isn’t this as close to a break as we’re ever going to get?”

It’s not as reassuring as he wanted it to be. Dean’s eyelids shutter, then drop shut. He’s tired. They both are, and disoriented from the time change. Castiel resents that something as simple as traveling a few thousand miles has thrown him into such disarray.

Before he can do something else foolish such as touching Dean’s face or resorting to bald-faced honesty, Daniel reemerges. “He’ll be back.” He cocks his head, the gesture indicating invitation rather than curiosity as it does when Castiel does it. “Is there a subject you’re interested in?”

“The occult.”

Daniel’s eyebrows rise again, but he makes no comment beyond, “I think you’ll be more than satisfied with what we’ve got here.” They follow him through the twisting depths of the building in silence. Occasionally, Castiel thinks he catches snippets of other conversations penetrating the walls, but he can never make out more than one or two words: _vengeful_ , or _Piccadilly_ , or once, so soft he’s unsure he heard anything at all, _seraphim_.

Soon, he and Dean are alone again, Daniel promising to return their way every so often to check on them. Castiel’s not sure he believes it, but he doesn’t mind solitude as he faces down the haphazard stacks of books.

“Great.” Dean deposits himself into an office chair and cringes when the spring, apparently broken, does nothing to cushion his descent.

Castiel’s attention is only half on Dean. There are dozens of volumes, arranged with no readily obvious organization system. Some can hardly be called books at all: at first glance, he sees old composition notebooks, photo albums with yellowing edges, and simple stacks of 8.5” by 11” printer paper bound together with twine or stuffed into store-bought binders.

“Earth to Cas.” Dean snaps his fingers. “You actually have something in mind here?”

“Maybe,” Castiel says. He licks his lips, tasting the fine layer of dust that hangs in the air.

Dean sighs and works his cell phone free from the pocket of his jeans. “Guess it’s time to face the music.” He digs the pad of his thumb into the power button with his jaw set. It makes Castiel think of reluctant¬ angels going off to battle for the first time, grim yet determined.

Castiel leaves him to it, tuning out the irritated rumble of Sam’s voice from the speaker of Dean’s phone, and begins to page through a nineteenth-century Englishman’s account of his firsthand encounters with a troupe of friendly faeries. Seelie and benevolent, they had done their human friend a multitude of favors over the years until their Unseelie rivals caught up with them and the gentleman never heard from them again.

As he grimaces and reaches for his next selection, Charlie’s voice rings out bright and brash in the background: “ _Hey, nerd! I’m not saying we’re worried about you, but we’re totally worried about you. Nice useless note, by the way. Give your huge brother a call, okay? I’m scared he’s gonna up and split on a crazy revenge quest like your dad and I get the feeling you wouldn’t be so cool with that._ ”

Because he’s facing away from Dean, Castiel lets himself smile. The selection here isn’t so different from the Men of Letters, but he’s hopeful that its more ancient roots will afford him some access to the variety of pantheons that have been somewhat lost to the Anglocentric world of American hunting.

“Yeah,” Dean grunts behind him. “Yeah, yeah, put me through.”

Castiel flips through something that looks like a grimoire, the creatures featured within so alien that even Castiel has never seen them. The language is an older variant of Italian, and it’s alarming to realize that he needs a moment of digging through his mental stores before he’s able to read it without squinting at the crumbling pages. Tentacles, multitudes of eyeballs, snarling heads with rows and rows of teeth—when Castiel comprehends the captions, he almost laughs out loud. These aren’t witness accounts; they’re some overly imaginative monk’s idea of what angels must look like.

“Close,” he murmurs, “but no cigar.” _Looney Tunes_ , if he’s not mistaken. With thanks to Metatron.

The next book he selects, hand-lettered and occupying a humble black journal that could have come from any supermarket in the city of London, comes closer to his goal. It can’t be older than ten years, and it’s a young woman’s careful illustrations of as many members of the Hindu pantheon as she could fit into the undersized two hundred pages. _To be continued_ , the last page reads, but Castiel cannot find a second installment no matter how meticulously he looks.

It’s slender and it had been hidden underneath a stack of larger, more important-looking books. Weighing the virtues of strict morality against the virtues of casting a wide net when it comes to helping Dean, Castiel tucks the book into the back pocket of his jeans and makes sure his T-shirt is tugged down far enough to cover it.

He’s willing to gamble that by the time this enclave of hunters notices the theft—if they ever do—he will be far away, possibly across the globe.

Castiel’s running the pad of his thumb against a thicker leather-bound volume when Dean’s hand heavy at his shoulder startles him. He hears a distant, tinny hum that resolves into someone’s voice across international lines.

“Hey, Sam wants to talk to you,” Dean says. Castiel doesn’t process the words right away, only the rumbling rise and fall of Dean’s voice curling low directly into his ear.

“Okay,” he says without thinking, faintly startled when the result is Dean’s phone thrust into his hand, cold air at his back, and Sam talking, rapid-fire bursts of panicked speech, in his ear.

“—you, I’m not that surprised that Dean would think this was a good idea but Cas, man, I thought we were kinda on the same side here.” A pause as Sam sucks in a deep breath, then continues: “It’s not like I’m mad, I’m just _freaked_ , you know? You really thought that note was going to make it all totally fine?”

Castiel breathes in turn. The physical distance between them dims the sense of urgency; he can’t see Sam’s grimly-set mouth or the dark circles that are no doubt beneath his eyes. The guilt will settle in with time.

“No,” he says, “I didn’t. It was selfish.”

Sam’s silent, which could be the bad connection or just surprise. “Well.” He chuckles lowly. “I guess I was just telling you that being selfish is sometimes a good thing. I wasn’t really expecting you to take it this far, though.”

Castiel licks his lips. He’s not sure where Dean has retreated. “If I tell you that it was Dean’s idea…”

Sam laughs again, a looser sound. “I know that much. He already told me. He doesn’t want me blaming you, but it’s not like he took you along at gunpoint.” And a significant, loaded pause.

“Sam! No, of course not. Please don’t worry.”

If gestures could travel across phone lines, Castiel is sure he would hear Sam rolling his eyes. “Too little too late. What are you guys even doing?”

Castiel wonders how to phrase his response when he’s not sure of the truth himself. He could say: _We’re running away from our problems like human teenagers in a romantic comedy._ Or he could say: _We’re learning how to be around each other without the crushing pressure of everything familiar that hurts when we look at it._

“We’re looking for Metatron,” he says. It’s not a lie, but it feels like one as the words slip out of his mouth. “I want my grace back, and I think that if I get it, I can help cure Dean of the Mark.”

Sam makes a frustrated noise that crackles in Castiel’s ear. “And you couldn’t tell me because—?” He’s using a tone of restraint on purpose, Castiel knows; being so physically large and having held more power than most humans touch in several lifetimes, Sam tries to hold himself in, to seem gentle even when he’s feeling anything but.

“It was a last-minute decision.”

A slow sigh buzzes over their connection. “We’re kinda stuck here, guys. Charlie’s gonna take a while to heal up and I don’t want to leave her alone. You really think you might be getting somewhere with this?”

A pile of books clatters a few yards away, the sound obscurely reassuring, since it has to be Dean. “Yes,” Castiel lies. He’ll rely on truth for the rest: “Using the Book of the Damned is a bad idea. I’ve stopped the progression of the Mark for the time being and Dean is doing well. If my grace can’t cure him completely, it should be able to help considerably.”

Sam sighs again, and Castiel imagines him running a hand through his hair, pushing it back from his forehead. He wonders how Charlie is faring, if she’s recovering. “Okay,” Sam says, “but I don’t want to sit around twiddling my thumbs wondering how soon my brother is gonna snap again. Just—keep in touch.”

“Yes.” Castiel smiles. “Do you have Skype? Nora liked to use that to assess men before she went on dates with them.”

“Yeah.” Sam laughs one more time. “You’re gonna have a great time getting Dean to work with that, but yeah. I bet Charlie’d like to see your faces.”

“We’ll rely on her for technical support,” Castiel promises. “Sam—I’m sorry.”

“Whatever.” There’s a bitter little twist to Sam’s voice, but it smooths away within seconds. “I’m used to Dean leaving notes and screwing off without warning. At least this one told me where he was going.”

Castiel swallows. There’s nothing to be said in defense of Dean’s actions as a demon. His heart rate has picked up without warning. “We’ll come back.” Dean will, that is. Castiel will see to it.

 

Once they’re done with Sam, they spend the next hour browsing in silence. Dean is uncharacteristically subdued, his shoulders tucked close to his spine and his eyes trained downward. Castiel wants to touch him, just the arc of his spine or the small of his back; wants the luxury of reading the signals of firing neurons and synapses, listening to the flow of Dean’s blood in his veins. Dean doesn’t linger long on any book, only flips through pages without stopping to read more than two or three words at a time.

“So, uh.” Dean coughs, clearing dust from his throat. His voice emerges as a low creak nonetheless. “Thanks for throwing Sam off the trail.”

Castiel furrows his brow, lowering the album of blurry instant-camera photos at which he’s been squinting so that he can direct the squint at Dean instead. “I didn’t. I only told him one lie.”

Dean blinks at him, slow like an owl, like Castiel in his first few minutes inhabiting any new human vessel. “Just one lie.” The corners of his mouth twitch, quirking upward. “You’re such a weirdo.”

“It’s—the truth, actually.” An answering smile tugs at Castiel’s lips. Dean brings that out in him. “We’re really not on a vacation for pleasure, though I’m not sure that would be such a bad idea for you.”

“Or you,” Dean counters with stubborn immediacy. “Have you had one, like… ever?”

“Have you?”

Dean huffs. “Doesn’t count. Your life’s been, what, literally thousands of times longer than mine? You earned it at least a couple centuries before I was even born.”

Castiel lets his breath out until his lungs feel flattened and empty. “You’ve sacrificed yourself to the bone again and again,” he says. “Surely that bumps you a few spots up in the queue.”

“Well, uh.” Dean coughs again, but this time Castiel suspects it’s a space filler. “Maybe we could go together, for, y’know, efficiency’s sake.”

“Yeah,” Castiel says, solemn, “maybe.”

 

By the time Daniel’s husband returns, even Castiel is out of momentum. His stomach is empty and there’s pressure building in his temples and he’s dangerously tempted to whine about it, so he’s tucked himself into a rattily-upholstered armchair to watch Dean playing repetitive games on his cell phone as the sun sinks lower in the murky sky outside.

“You’re sure,” begins the naga without bothering to announce his presence, which manifested without a single tell-tale sound, “that it’s an angel we’re looking for and not some lower-order celestial being.”

Dean shoots Castiel a look that clearly means _A what?_

Castiel shifts his weight in the chair. He winces at the stiffness of his shoulders and says, before he can regret giving up one more truth, “Yes, but that angel’s in possession of another angel’s grace at the moment. He’s been robbed of his own.” He doesn’t dare consult his peripheral vision to see Dean’s expression _now_.

“Ah.” The naga’s lips thin, the warm brown of his eyes taking on a yellowish cast that Castiel’s sure isn’t just the lighting. “That would have been good to know.”

“I know.” Castiel doesn’t apologize. “You must have come across something in your inquiries, though?”

The naga’s tongue darts out to wet his lips. It isn’t forked, but Castiel wouldn’t have been surprised. “If it… he… was ever here, I don’t believe he’s here any longer. My associates who dabble more closely than I do in Abrahamic affairs have been keeping an eye on the ebb and flow of celestial energy in the area. Of course, we’ve had our share of fallen and semi-fallen angels especially since the—event of a few years ago, but according to their instruments, an angel siphoning off the grace of another leaves a distinct energy signature.”

“Okay.” Castiel risks glancing at Dean, whose knuckles are laced tightly and whose jaw is clenched. “He can’t travel _too_ quickly. Heaven is locked to him and even angels in full possession of their grace can’t use their wings without the support of Heaven.”

“Indeed,” the naga says. “It’s moving quickly, but not at superhuman speeds. Apparently it lingered for quite a while around St. Paul’s, hopefully not causing too much of a fuss.”

He pauses, eyes flicking toward Dean and then back to Castiel as if wondering about Dean’s function on this mission. Luckily, he’s polite enough not to ask. “Its last detection was on a ferry to the continent. France, we believe; Paris is the obvious choice, given the history of religious fanaticism there. Good luck with that.”

“Thank you,” Dean says, stiff and awkward. His chin is tipped up in defiance. “We appreciate your help.”

“I’ll pass the compliments along to Daniel,” the naga says dryly, “and the rest of our cohort. I see you’ve enjoyed our literary selection.”

Castiel’s chest tightens as the naga regards him. He’s sure he’ll be caught in his act of petty thievery, humiliated further in front of Dean and forced to grovel for forgiveness—but the naga only flashes golden eyes at him and smiles.

“Yes,” Castiel says. “I have. We have.”

“Coulda used a couple more books with pictures for the non-nerds among us,” Dean says.

“Those are comic books,” Castiel says, “and as far as I know, they’re about as nerdy as anything else I looked at today.”

Dean leaves the phone number for the bunker scribbled on a sticky note in the naga’s possession; they’re both unwilling to stick around much longer, already feeling the pull eastward as Metatron keeps traveling farther and farther away from them.

“You,” Dean gets out through gritted teeth the moment they hit cool evening air, “lied to me.”

“A lie of omission.”

“A _lie_ ,” Dean insists, “is a lie is a freaking lie. Who has Metatron’s grace? You?”

This confrontation is getting worse by the moment. “Sam,” Castiel says, hoping to avoid digging himself an even deeper hole. “We were trying to threaten him into—well.”

“Into helping me.” Dean’s voice goes flat and distant, and he shoves his fists deep into the pockets of his jacket. “And you didn’t tell me about it ’cause…?”

Castiel has no excuse that will satisfy Dean. He doesn’t try to concoct one. “I’m sorry,” he says instead. Maybe here he can get away with touching the crook of Dean’s elbow, so he does, relieved when Dean doesn’t shake him off. “But it’s for the best now. It makes our job easier.”

“Yay,” Dean says without a trace of inflection. He slows to a stop at a street corner. It smells like it might rain, which Castiel remembers is typical of London, of England in general.

“Come on.” Castiel curls his fingers into the bend of Dean’s arm. He’s not asking for forgiveness, just cooperation. “Let’s follow Metatron. We’ve come this far already.”

Dean’s throat moves interestingly as he swallows. He nods. Castiel retrieves his own phone from his jeans pocket to begin researching the most efficient route to Paris.


	3. France

The evening train makes Dean grumpier. He’s angry with Castiel, and Castiel is accustomed to that—Dean’s anger burns bright, makes him speak coldly. He won’t be reasoned with and he won’t come around to his usual offhanded kindness until the anger has worked its way out of his system of its own volition. There’s no arguing with it, only waiting it out. Castiel has learned to apologize once and then to wait, because Dean will forgive. He always does.

The cramped quarters, though, and the middle-aged man snoring loudly in the compartment next to theirs—well, those don’t _help_ the process. Dean stares at the maroon carpet of the train’s floor, stares out the window as the slanted slate colors of London recede into gently rolling countryside, stares at anything but Castiel.

They don’t exchange more than a few words before they make it to Dover. The building where the train deposits them is gray and dingy. Castiel imagines Dean’s fingers itching with the latent desire to clean it the way he loves to do when he’s anxious, not that he would ever admit to that correlation.

“Come on,” Castiel says again. He brushes his knuckles against the small of Dean’s back and Dean starts, casting a glance of unfiltered surprise in Castiel’s direction. “We can walk or we can take a taxi. I suggest walking.”

“Yeah.” Dean’s voice is rough. He pounds himself on the chest with a fist, a little too hard, so Castiel can hear the thump against his sternum. “You, uh. You speak French, right?”

Only a few hours and already Castiel is edging back into Dean’s good graces. It draws a smile from him and another touch to Dean’s back, between his shoulder blades this time. He’s hardly aware he’s doing it until Dean shudders. “ _Oui,_ ” he says, “ _je parle français._ ”

Dean’s teeth graze his lower lip. “Cool.”

The sun has sunk below the horizon by now, so they walk in darkness lit by sporadic street lamps. Dean’s thumbs hook through the belt loops of his jeans and Castiel finds himself looking over more frequently than he can explain, considering how the shapes of Dean’s hands frame the relative slimness of his hips, how Dean’s walk could almost be called a swagger with the way his legs bow and the ease of his stride. It makes him want to wrap himself around Dean from behind, to absorb the confidence with which he inhabits his body, to press it into the rest of his faculties with careful hands and love so that Dean can rest easy and proud of all his aspects.

Instead, Castiel buys them tickets for the ferry to Calais, handing over their recently-exchanged cash with his best smile. “ _Merci_ ,” he tells the attendant; he receives one polite smile from the bored employee and one barely-there heated glance from Dean, which makes it entirely worth it.

It’s a forty-minute wait for the ferry to arrive and it’s cold by the water. Castiel hugs himself, trying to hold onto his body’s fading warmth.

“Hey.” Dean slides his fingertips against the back of Castiel’s neck. Castiel remembers the way Dean had moved in his sleep last night, pulling Castiel closer with lazy contentment. Something near the bottom of his stomach threatens to drop out and leave him floating, entirely useless.

“Hi.” Castiel tests the waters, so to speak, and leans his shoulder against Dean’s. Careful, careful, until Dean slings his arm around Castiel’s waist and Castiel breathes, suffused with sudden relaxation and relief.

They don’t speak right away. Castiel’s never sure of the right words and Dean can wield the right words all too well, and this tentative intimacy is fragile. Dean’s breath ruffles the hairs that stick up around Castiel’s ears; Castiel greedily soaks up the heat of Dean, solid and steady with his thigh pressed against Castiel’s.

“I, uh.” Castiel registers the vibrations before the fact that Dean is speaking. “I’m.” Dean pauses. Castiel likes the way Dean tends to stumble over his words, the unpolished humanity of him. “It’s not that I’m not, I dunno, grateful to you guys for wanting to help me out.”

“I know,” Castiel says. He splays his fingers across Dean’s back.

“I don’t wanna be the guy who wastes your time, that’s the thing.” Dean’s nose and cheeks are pink, embarrassment or the cold sea air or both.

“I don’t think anyone wants that.” Curious, Castiel drags his thumb into the dip of Dean’s spine. Dean’s eyelids drop, the lashes dark slashes against his freckles. “You’ve given up a lot.”

“What, and you haven’t?”

Castiel tips his head to one side, eyeing the lines that bracket the sides of Dean’s mouth. “Is everything a competition in your mind?”

Dean’s lips thin, a warning sign to Castiel. Still, it was an honest question.

“Dean.”

“Maybe.” They make split-second eye contact, Dean’s pupils wide and dark. “But it’s not like I’m trying to win.”

“Except against every monster, ghost, and demon you see.”

“That’s my _job_.”

“And it lets you win whenever you like.” Castiel shrugs, careful so as not to dislodge Dean’s hard-won hold on him.

Dean’s chest rises, falls. “We gotta get you a jacket when we hit Paris. You ready to get all fashionable?”

Castiel smiles and accepts the change of subject. “I’m ready to get _warm_ , that’s for certain. I wouldn’t object to looking good at the same time.”

The flush decorating Dean’s face deepens and spreads. To his credit, his voice is even as he says, “We’ll see what we can do.”

 

Castiel wraps his hands more tightly around the Styrofoam cup of coffee, willing the warmth to seep more deeply into his bones. The coffee tastes like nothing, except possibly dirt, but each sip chases away some of the aching chill in his center, so he keeps drinking, and he keeps accepting refills from the trolley that traverses the train every forty-five minutes or so.

Dean’s nursing his own coffee with determination, shooting mistrustful looks at nearly everyone who passes their way. If he’s going to glare at every French-speaker they encounter, their time here may be a trial.

Paris swallows them up without warning, scattered cottages lit by the pastel sunrise giving abrupt way to a city. The train dips and descends underground, depositing Dean and Castiel and a whole host of dull-eyed commuters into a cement labyrinth.

“Here,” Castiel starts. When he really looks at Dean, he recognizes the sheen to Dean’s eyes as fear beginning to verge on panic, and he grabs hold of Dean’s wrist. “Here. Let me get us out of here. I can read the signs.”

Dean meets his gaze and nods, his Adam’s apple bobbing as he hoists the duffel bag of their sparse belongings higher on his shoulder. Castiel sucks down the last of his coffee and throws it into the nearest trash can, small compared to those readily available in the United States.

People surround them on all sides, so Castiel focuses on following each _sortie_ -labeled exit and keeping his grip on Dean’s wrist no matter how clammy the palm of his own hand grows. Dean is relying on him. He keeps going until they emerge into a Thursday morning in Paris, a cutting breeze striking both their faces at once and urging Dean a step closer to Castiel.

“Geez.” Dean turns his hand over in Castiel’s hold, his fingers curling against the base of Castiel’s palm. “I don’t normally get like that, man. Sorry.”

Castiel feels drained of air, all his feeble sleep-deprived focus sucked into the scrape of Dean’s blunt fingernails against the thin skin of his wrist. Someone bumps into Castiel and mutters an apology, jolting him into response: “You’re surrounded by people who speak a language that you don’t speak. I don’t blame you. I’m just lucky.”

“Yeah,” Dean says, “lucky.” He shifts his hand. They’re nearly holding hands, fingers entangled, and the sandy colors of central Paris fade in the face of Dean looking Castiel right in the eye as they touch.

“We’re tired,” Castiel says instead of saying _I’d like to touch your knuckles and the skin underneath your ears and the muscles in your thighs._ “I know you want to find Metatron as soon as possible, but we’ll need our wits about us to effectively track down leads.”

Dean’s jaw works. He’s suppressing a yawn, Castiel realizes after the first flash of worry that he’s done or said something wrong again. “You’re not wrong.”

“Not this time.”

Navigating the vagaries of human transactions falls to Castiel. The language barrier is nonexistent to him, but the social barrier remains entirely intact. He resorts to his phone, which still works here and for which he is increasingly grateful, and the merciful assistance of Google and the Yelp app.

Nothing in this city is cheap, he discovers. Not food, not coffee, and certainly not lodgings. With Dean’s blessing, he throws their budget out the window and vows to serve his time learning the art of credit card fraud once they’re back home to make up for it.

The compromise nets them a small room in the basement of a hotel advertising that it was built sometime in the 1960s as if this is an attractive feature. The bed is queen-sized and Dean doesn’t even argue; he collapses artlessly, boots still on, and nestles into the pillows with his knees curled up toward his chin.

Castiel sits for a moment longer. He’s human and he’s so tired. In body and in spirit, tired of the hundreds of aches and pains that plague him and tired of keeping himself from laying hands upon Dean.

Shedding his outer layers, he arranges himself next to Dean.

“Hey.” The word’s gruff, muffled into Dean’s forearm.

“Mm.” Brave for a moment, Castiel touches his thumb to the back of Dean’s hand. He thinks the crinkling around Dean’s eyes indicates a smile.

“ _Merci._ ”

Dean’s accent is horrible. Castiel smiles back at him, sets his hand over Dean’s. His is the larger, he notes. “ _De rien._ ”

 

When Castiel trips back into wakefulness, there is someone sitting cross-legged at the edge of the bed. Someone watching with dark, intent eyes, neither benevolent nor malevolent.

Castiel, half-convinced that he’s still dreaming, drags himself upright. His vision blurs and the figure—female, he thinks, with long hair and gleaming red fingernails—dissolves. Seamless, leaving nothing but a nanosecond’s impression of memory on Castiel’s human-faulty retinas.

“Dean,” he hisses, so shaken he barely registers that Dean’s T-shirt has ridden up to expose a soft patch of Dean’s skin to his view. “Dean, wake up.”

“Mmph. Why,” Dean says.

“Dean! Did you hear anyone come in?”

Dean’s scowl is audible in his tone. “No, I would’ve woken up. ’m not an amateur.”

Even with his heart knocking insistently at his ribcage, Castiel believes Dean. “No one at all?” he asks, to be sure.

“Dude.” Dean groans, stretching with his head still buried in the pillows. “Unless it was something not-human. Which, hey, welcome to our lives. Think I should’ve put salt around before we conked out?”

“No.” Castiel scrubs his hands through the mess their nap has made of his hair. “It wasn’t a ghost. I think. It didn’t feel like one.”

Rumpled and red-eyed, Dean looks worlds better than he had during the last leg of their journey from the United Kingdom. “Speaking of ghosts, we gotta figure out where our people hang out around here. You know much about Paris?”

“Some,” Castiel says dryly. “If by some you mean its entire history and geography.”

Dean snorts, rolls his eyes as if he’s not impressed. Castiel can tell that he is, though. “Showoff.”

Castiel smiles. “I don’t know exactly where we’ll find hunters here anymore, but I can make a guess. I’d like us to start in Montmartre.”

“I’m not even gonna try and say that one,” Dean says, shimmying out of his jeans so that they pile on the floor at his ankles. “But I am gonna go find out how French water pressure holds up.”

Castiel refrains from offering to join Dean. It’s too likely that Dean will receive the invitation as a joke.

They shuffle around and past each other in the small bathroom. Castiel wishes fervently that he had the strength of will to ignore the smell of Dean clean of everything but the pine-scented shampoo provided by the hotel.

Freshly washed, another of Dean’s rejected shirts—this one shrunk in the wash so it’s too tight around Dean’s middle—pulled over his head, Castiel leads the way north toward Montmartre. The Eiffel Tower looms overhead like something out of the postcards lining the tourist shops they pass on their way toward the Seine. The sun’s sinking in the sky, casting long shadows that paint Dean’s face with stark highlights.

The breeze coming off the river is strong; it cuts through Castiel’s layers with icy fingers. He’s mid-shiver, distracted by the goosebumps climbing his arms, when he notices that Dean has fallen out of step with him.

“How _much_?”

Dean’s voice, loud and overly deliberate. He’s gesticulating with both hands, leaning earnestly toward a frowning Frenchman manning a riverside booth that sells various secondhand wares.

“Dean?” Castiel steps up beside him

Dean wrinkles his nose and then shoots Castiel a wide-eyed look. “Uh, help?”

The salesman scowls and crosses his arms.

“ _Je suis vraiment désolé,_ ” Castiel starts, continuing in French as well: “My friend here is very American.”

The man’s expression of suspicion eases, just a little. “I do speak English, but he didn’t even bother with so much as a _bonsoir_.”

Castiel sighs, then turns to Dean and elbows him in the ribcage. “Say _bonsoir._ Just do it.”

“Um.” Dean’s face screws up with self-conscious trepidation. “ _Bonsoir_?” Again, his accent is barely passable, but he earns a smile from the salesman.

“Good!” The Frenchman’s English, meanwhile, is accented but clear. “You were saying? You want this coat?” He holds up a jacket, buttery black leather with the zipper shining silver in the low light.

“ _Dean_ ,” Castiel says lowly.

Now that communication lines have been established, Dean ignores Castiel. “Yeah,” he says, reaching over the counter to rub the jacket’s sleeve between thumb and forefinger. “Think it’d fit my buddy here?”

Castiel is summarily subjected to a brisk onceover that makes him want to curl in on himself and shuffle behind Dean.

“ _Oui_ ,” the man assures Dean. “Only fifty-five Euros.”

Dean pulls another anguished face. “Dude. Hey, Cas, is this one of those countries where you’re supposed to haggle?”

“I don’t—”

“Fifty!”

Castiel is interrupted before he can even advise Dean against it. His advice would have been wrong, then.

Dean shrugs, yanking his wallet out of his back pocket. “It’s a nice jacket.” He licks his thumb and counts out the Euros note by note until he has enough to hand over with an amiable smile. “Thanks. I mean, _merci_.”

“Dean,” Castiel tries one more time, helpless.

Guileless, Dean holds the jacket up to Castiel’s frame, biting his lower lip as if he’s gauging whether it will fit. “You’re cold, right?”

“Well.” Castiel pauses, frustrated and so desperately fond that it feels like a fist is tightening its grip around his heart. He’s not sure he likes the way emotions can manifest with such aggressive physicality in the human body.

“And hey, I said we’d get you a jacket. Y’know I’m a man of my word.”

Castiel relents, stubborn but not stubborn enough to deter Dean. Not with the well-meaning lilt of hope that’s coloring Dean’s tone. “Thank you, Dean.” He takes the leather jacket, the shoulders already warm where Dean was holding the garment, and wriggles his way into it. The lining is thick and it fits well around his shoulders, snug but not too tight.

Dean’s lips are parted when Castiel looks back at him, his pupils dark. Castiel raises an eyebrow, sliding his hands into the pockets of his new jacket.

“I’m, ah, you. That looks pretty good on you.”

Abruptly aware that his appearance may have an effect—an interesting one—on Dean, Castiel finds that he’s smiling. He tips his chin up and looks Dean directly in the eye. “Well, you have good taste.”

Dean’s eyelids flutter, his lips pressing together. “Yeah,” he says, his voice fainter. “Come on, we got places to be.”

Castiel stifles a passing urge to laugh, then a less-passing urge to smooth the worried little furrow on Dean’s forehead with his fingertips. He doesn’t know where to begin with conveying that he doesn’t mind if Dean is attracted to him—that he couldn’t be farther from minding. And without extrasensory angelic perception, he can’t be certain that attraction is what Dean is feeling. Perhaps it’s a delusion brought on by the sheer strength of his wishful thinking. Shit, he hopes not.

“Yeah,” he echoes, not touching Dean.

They walk, close enough that Castiel imagines he can feel the body heat emanating from Dean but not so close that their hands are in danger of brushing. Castiel could bridge the gap, curl his pinky finger around the thick, curved column of Dean’s thumb.

Montmartre looks different from the ground. No less lovely, no less colorful, but different. Taller, maybe. The basilica dominates Castiel’s attention the moment they draw close to the eighteenth arrondissement. He can see out of the corner of his eye that even Dean is gawking.

“You know,” Castiel says under his breath, “the reputation of this place used to be terrible.”

“Cool.” Dean grins, glancing in the direction of Pigalle as if he has some sixth sense for debauchery.

Castiel wants to laugh and nearly does. “There used to be a café in this area that served as a gathering place for hunters.”

“Like the Roadhouse but for floofy French people in turtlenecks?”

“Sure.” Castiel tries to call to mind a mental map of the city of Paris and pushes back the flutter of alarm when its edges are blurry, when he isn’t entirely certain of every street and arrondissement. Human memory and its fallibility. “Follow me,” he says with falsified confidence.

They take a few wrong turns, but Dean doesn’t point them out if he notices Castiel’s moments of hesitation. He strolls silently at Cas’ heels, eyeing the shopfronts they pass and occasionally making derisive faces at the gaudiest of the locals.

What used to be a café has transformed into a bistro. Castiel pauses outside; he tugs the new jacket more tightly around his body. It’s nearly dark and Dean is always tired, no matter how much sleep he gets, which makes Castiel want to put him to bed as early as possible. When he tilts his chin up, the light on the neatly-etched but nondescript _Le Bistro_ sign above the door shifts and he gets the view he was hoping for: a pentagram, visible only from certain angles, its crisp angles painted in with silver.

Dean’s breath gusts against his ear. “Cool. That’s kind of a neat trick.”

Cas’s heart turns a tidy somersault. “Indeed.”

It smells of smoke and red wine inside. The doorway is a tight fit, and Castiel comes close to colliding with a woman, dark-skinned and well-groomed. She looks familiar, and he wants to stop her with a hand on the shoulder and a polite inquiry—and then, before he can work out the right way to do it without drawing attention to themselves, she melts into the milling crowd outside.

Castiel comes back to himself in time to rescue Dean from where he’s smiling, charming but awkward and ill-versed in French, at the drab little hostess.

“ _Bonsoir._ ” Jimmy Novak wasn’t too bad at business smiles, so Castiel hopes muscle memory is kicking in to some extent. “Ah, just a table for two? Please.”

In short order, they’re tucked into a corner. Golden light pours from the sconce above their table; it filters through Dean’s eyelashes as he sinks down in his chair and heaves an expressive sigh. Conversations are hushed, and Castiel can barely catch half-sentences. He doesn’t hear anything out of the ordinary, but there’s no accounting for whatever code the French hunting community may use.

“Thanks, man.” When Castiel refocuses, Dean’s face is right there, his lips shining wetly as he looks at Castiel. “I’d, uh, literally be lost without you right now. Pretty sure they’d have all run me outta town with pitchforks.”

“It would be like _Beauty and the Beast_ ,” Castiel says.

Dean snorts, a startled little laugh. “God, it’s weird that you know all that stuff now.”

“Agreed,” Castiel says darkly.

Their waitress is tall but compact, dark hair pulled back from her face in a tight bun. Castiel takes an extra moment to study her before he pinpoints what seems strange. She’s weighed down by jewelry: two heavy crucifixes around her neck, thick rings in the shapes of pentagrams and various warding Enochian sigils and even a devil’s trap decorate every one of her fingers. There’s nearly a small church’s store of symbols and protection on one middle-aged woman.

“Hello?” She’s frowning down at him through her glasses. “ _Monsieur_?” She casts a dubious glance at Dean, who must be exuding his inability to speak French by sheer aggressive American-ness. “Ah, _monsieur_?”

“Yes.” Castiel arranges his mouth into another smile. “Hello. Are you the owner?”

“Co-owner. With Émilie over there.”

The hostess, just as prim and buttoned-up as the waitress, raises a hand from where she’s unsmilingly greeting a fresh gaggle of diners. There they are—bangles drip from her wrist as well. “It’s traditionally a very Catholic country,” Castiel tells Dean under his breath. “The hunters pick up on the cultural history as well.” Surely they would feel like manacles, but perhaps they get used to it with time. They must.

“Yes,” the waitress murmurs with a smile, “I know.” She’s not talking to them, but it stretches the boundaries of belief that she and Émilie could hear each other over the hum and buzz of the restaurant. Then again, when Castiel thinks of how attuned he’s grown to Dean’s every breath, he understands.

“Well!” She claps her hands together briskly, the rings making a series of pleasant clinking noises. “ _Je m’appelle_ Charlotte. What brings the two of you here?”

Castiel hesitates. Dean’s elbows are on the table, his chin in his hand, and when Castiel looks to him for help, he smiles and mouths _I got this._

“Hi, Charlotte.” Dean lets his jacket fall open, undoes the top two buttons of his flannel shirt, and tugs the collar of his T-shirt down until the black of his tattoo peeks out.

Castiel’s mouth feels dry. He resolves to order some wine with dinner, if they stick around that long.

Charlotte laughs. She gives Dean a cursory glance, long enough to recognize the half of the tattoo that’s visible, and nods. “I see,” she says, still speaking in French. “You are not here for the food, then?”

“We may be,” Castiel says, his own gaze lingering on the deftness of Dean’s fingers popping buttons back into place and then dropping to drum against the rough-hewn tabletop. “Dean is always happy to eat. But you’re correct that food isn’t what brings us here in the first place.”

“Dean.” Charlotte hums thoughtfully.

Dean, hearing his own name, perks up. He puts on another broad smile, leaning back in his seat. Castiel bites his own lip against an unruly smile. “Yeah,” Dean says, jerking a thumb toward Castiel, “and this is Cas. You like his jacket?”

Despite her stern exterior, Charlotte does have a charming laugh. “Certainly,” she says in precise English, “it is a nice jacket. Must be French. And you must be Dean Winchester. I thought I had heard that you had crossed the ocean, and now your companion nearly bowled over poor Alakshmi on your way in. It must be a real catastrophe in the works.”

“We’re looking for someone,” Castiel says, slipping back into French in hopes of earning the establishment’s favor. “Something, depending on your sense of semantics.”

“Émilie and I will switch places once you have ordered, then. She speaks to everyone. I’m best at recommending food.”

“Well, then.” Castiel closes the menu; he hasn’t even begun to read it. “If we could impose on you for both of the services you two offer…?”

Charlotte nods, severe and serious once again. “Red wine, yes?”

“Please, but be gentle. Dean is—”

“Dean Winchester,” Charlotte finishes. “He will be wishing we had beer that tastes like urine, hm? I don’t think so.” She sweeps away, snatching their menus in her silver-laden hands, and disappears into the kitchen.

“Wow,” Dean says, holding a hand to his brow as if he’s peering after her, “you guys were saying my name a whole lot. Do I even wanna know?”

“Don’t worry,” Castiel assures him wryly, “we were discussing how devastatingly handsome you are.”

Dean laughs, full-bodied, and Castiel is warm throughout before their bottle of wine even arrives.

 

“What the fuck, Cas.” Dean’s gesture is so expansive it almost knocks over both their half-empty wineglasses, the remnants of a healthy bottle delivered by Charlotte and accepted by Dean after only a few disgusted facial expressions. “I can’t believe you made me eat bugs.”

Castiel swallows more of his wine before attempting his rejoinder. “I didn’t _make_ you do anything, and escargot is an entirely normal dish. They serve it in the United States, too.”

Dean’s face crinkles up so that it’s nearly ugly, if Dean’s face were capable of such a thing. “Ew. Oh, man, what if I’ve eaten slugs before and I didn’t even know it? I would’ve known, right?”

Castiel chuckles, fond. His world’s blurred comfortably around the edges, Dean’s face beautiful and soft. “You would’ve known. They were good, weren’t they?”

Scowling, Dean swipes the last piece of bread from its basket, drags it through the remnants of their escargot, and stuffs it in his mouth. It’s objectively disgusting, but all Castiel wants to do is smile and wipe crumbs from Dean’s mouth with his thumb.

“Yeah,” Dean mumbles. “They were pretty good. Asshole.”

Castiel beams at him across the table. “I hate to say I told you so—”

“You do not,” Dean interrupts. “You love to say it. Go ahead and do it.”

If Castiel still had awareness of his wings, he’s sure that they’d be spreading with pleasure. “I told you so. And furthermore, I was right.”

Dean’s laugh rings out, seems to saturate the entirety of the small bistro. He knocks back the rest of his wine in one smooth motion, his throat working as he swallows. “Congratu-freaking-lations, nerd.”

“Thank you.”

“I see you two are enjoying yourselves.” A French voice, and female, but not Charlotte, so it must be—yes. Émilie, sober gray gaze fixed on Castiel. In one hand, she balances two cassoles of pork cassoulet on a tray; she serves them without releasing Castiel from that thoughtful scrutiny. If he still had his grace, she would have known in a second or less.

“It’s very good,” Castiel says, hoping to win her over with a compliment. A true one, no less.

“It’s _bien_ as hell,” Dean chimes in, already shoveling a mouthful of beans and pork belly into his mouth.

“Yes,” Castiel says dryly. “That.”

Émilie doesn’t smile, but the lines bracketing her mouth soften. “You’re hunters. And you…” She taps the side of Castiel’s head with two ring-laden fingers. “You’re a hunter willing to spend time with Dean Winchester, but you’re not his brother.”

“No, I’m not. Are you trying to figure out who I am?”

“Naturally.” She drums her fingers against Castiel’s shoulder, then retreats a handful of steps with a measured glance toward Dean. “And my partner tells me you’re trying to track someone, or something.”

“Someone or something celestial in origin,” Castiel says. Daniel and the naga have taught him to be upfront with hunters. “I confess it’s personal.”

Dean’s still eating, but he’s listening. Maybe he can’t understand the words, but his attention volleys from speaker to speaker and despite the comically large bites of food in his mouth, his expression remains serious. Ambitions loosened with alcohol, Castiel knocks his foot against Dean’s under the table, a gentle reminder of where his attention truly lies. The corners of Dean’s eyes break into delicate webs of smiling wrinkles.

“Well,” Émilie says, pulling Castiel’s thoughts back to her and to Metatron, “most of the hunters in the city of Paris do stop by regularly. But angels are a little out of most of our realms of practical experience.” She holds up her wrist, a jeweled cross dangling in front of Castiel’s nose. “And hunting with angels as the target? Hardly.”

“Not hunting, exactly. Tracking.”

“Semantics,” Émilie says with a dismissive huff of laughter. “That said, I have heard tell of some unusually, ah, potent religious experiences taking place at Notre Dame over the past two or three days. Perhaps you should pay the cathedral a visit.”

“It’s a large cathedral,” Castiel counters, “with hundreds of visitors every day. Please don’t deflect my concerns quite so easily.”

Émilie hums under her breath. “There’s a tour guide there by the name of Georges. He’s a regular here as well. Newer to the scene in Paris, but I would suggest seeking him out.”

It’s a lead, at the very least. And Castiel’s cassoulet—delicious, if Dean’s reaction is any indication—is getting cold. He nods and lifts his glass to Émilie, the last sip or two of wine glowing ruby in the dim light. “Thank you very much.”

Émilie nods and touches Castiel’s shoulder one last time. “Be careful with that one,” she says, gesturing toward Dean with a small movement of her chin. “In America, they know how dangerous he is. Here, it is only rumors, but pay attention to them.”

At a loss, Castiel can only thank her again and watch the military set to her shoulders as she strolls back toward the kitchen. Her posture reminds him of Dean, in fact. Maybe that’s why she’s so wary of the Winchesters.

Dean, who kicks Castiel’s shin and who’s licking a smear of gravy off the back of his thumb. “What’d she say about me? Don’t bullshit me this time.”

Castiel spears as much of his dinner on his fork as he can at one time. “Your reputation continues to precede you. I think she has an interesting history.”

“Oh goodie,” Dean says. He shrugs, then, and eyes the last of Castiel’s wine. “You gonna finish that?”

 

Castiel awakens with an erection, a dull but persistent headache, and Dean’s mouth pressed to the back of his neck.

His jacket is gone—thrown over the single chair in the room, he remembers foggily. His jeans, too. Small favors, he thinks as he shifts in place and feels that his boxers are still there along with his T-shirt.

“Mmph.” Dean, his nose and mouth warm and his breath ruffling the hairs that curl up around the collar of Castiel’s shirt. “Quit movin’.”

Castiel obeys. There’s no way of knowing how long Dean will concede to stay like this. How long it will take Dean to remember his various tenets of masculinity. As it is, Dean’s lips are parted just above the first knob of Castiel’s spine, Dean’s hand is curled loose-fingered against Castiel’s stomach, and Castiel’s whole nervous system aches with the longing to do something about it.

They opted for a second bottle of wine the night before, and they drank it to boot. Dean’s mouth had been stained red, lush and inviting, and Castiel had leaned across the table and drawn his thumb across the bow of Dean’s lower lip, sucked the lingering flavor off his own skin. Dean’s eyes were wide and dark and fascinated.

They hadn’t talked about Metatron or the Mark of Cain or the horrors of adjusting to humanity, beyond a brief exchange of complaints at the necessity of using the toilet after consuming so much alcohol. Instead, Dean offered up stories—amusements from hunts during his and Sam’s shared past, his first attempt at a romantic encounter, the strangest and most interesting sights he’s encountered in his countless drives across the wastelands of the United States.

Castiel told his own in exchange, drenched in fewer mundanities but tinged with nostalgia nonetheless. The first time he witnessed the creation of a living creature from nothing but its parts. The fall of Rome and the subsequent aftermath. A particular copse of trees in Southeast Asia that earned his fondness over a series of centuries until he returned one day to find the entirety of the forest razed and chopped down for lumber.

Dean listened, drinking in Castiel’s words as thirstily as he’d drunk the wine. He’d chased stray drops of the cabernet off the side of his glass with his tongue, his thick, scarred fingers careful around the delicate stem of his wineglass. Castiel had run hot with wanting him.

Now, it’s all he can do to breathe. Returning to sleep is out of the question, but Dean is snoring, a gentle whistling noise, into his ear, and Castiel hates the thought of dislodging him. Especially with Dean’s thigh, broad and golden-haired and mostly bare, wedged between Castiel’s knees.

Dean grunts and uses the hand at Castiel’s stomach to pull Castiel closer. His fingertips brush bare skin where Castiel’s boxers are halfway pushed off his hip.

Down to his own underwear, Dean is hard as well, and Castiel can feel it, insistent against the small of his back. Warm, undeniably corporeal; Castiel’s own erection throbs sympathetically.

“Dean,” he says into the midmorning silence of their room. “Dean, wake up.”

“ _Ugh_ ,” Dean says. His fingers curl into the fabric of Castiel’s shirt. “I was trying not to.”

Like an idiot, Castiel shifts and dislodges himself enough to roll over. Dean blinks at him, gummy-eyed and disheveled.

“I.” Castiel’s words have fled all at once. He’s too, too aware of his cock pressed to the thick muscle at the top of Dean’s thigh, and of Dean glancing down, of Dean noticing.

“Whoa.” Dean swallows audibly. There’s gravel in his voice. His breath still smells like wine.

Castiel’s pinned by the heavy thoughtfulness of Dean’s expression. “Yes,” he manages, “well.”

Dean’s palm skims the skin of Castiel’s stomach, making his erection twitch. Dean’s still hard too, the shape of him so easy to see in the gray boxer-briefs he’s wearing.

“Just, ah.” With what looks like an effort, Dean shuts his eyes. The Mark is red, bright red, in Castiel’s peripheral vision. “I’ve got a killer hangover,” Dean says, “and breath straight from Sauron’s ass, so just… just not—not like this.”

Castiel’s chest squeezes in on itself with the abrupt force of surprise and a flutter of hope. It’s not a rejection. It’s—he’s not certain what it is, but he thinks it may be a promise. Dean’s lips are pressed tight together, nearly trembling. Castiel touches his mouth to Dean’s temple, imagining that he can taste the tenor of Dean’s thoughts and fears, but it’s only a night’s worth of sweat and lingering evergreen shampoo.

“Okay,” Castiel says. He kisses the ridge of Dean’s eyebrow, daring. “I’m going to take another shower. Then we’ll head to Notre Dame and plan our next move.”

“Sounds good.” Dean rubs his thumb against the angle of Castiel’s hipbone. “I’ll see what’s been happening back at the ranch.”

Castiel breathes in the smell of Dean’s skin for a moment longer, self-indulgent, before he disentangles himself. It may be trickery of human imagination, but he’s sure Dean is watching him as he shuffles toward the bathroom, and hopes Dean is enjoying the view.

 

Masturbation is worlds more interesting with the promise of physical contact on the horizon. Castiel allows himself to imagine Dean’s hands, Dean’s mouth, Dean’s rapt attention, all without guilt for once. He pictures the slyness of Dean’s smile, the practiced ease of Dean’s kisses, and comes against the shower wall with his heart in his throat.

He wonders whether Dean is thinking any of the same things. Again, he hopes.

He emerges with wet hair and a steadier gait to find Dean, dressed and presentable, frowning at the screen of his laptop, Charlie’s amused face taking up most of the display.

“Yeah,” she’s saying, “Notre Dame sounds about right. I mean, Google Translate isn’t really all it’s cracked up to be, but I did some reading between the lines on some French forums about the supernatural and there’ve definitely been some funky things going on there. They stopped about twenty-four hours ago, but since you’re already touristing it up…”

“Hello, Charlie.” Castiel leans down over Dean’s shoulder. He’s smoothed some gel into his hair, if the pleasant but chemical smell is anything to go by. “How is your recovery coming along?”

Charlie makes a dismissive gesture, slightly choppy with the weakness of the hotel’s wireless connection. “Long as I can still click and type, it’s not so bad. Plus, Dean’s brother here feels bad, so I’m getting the V.I.P. treatment. I might have to get shot more often.”

Dean chuckles. “Thanks, kiddo. And tell Sammy we say hi.”

There’s a clicking noise, then the call ends and the screen blackens. Dean shuts the laptop and, as he stands and moves past, graces Castiel with one long, weighted look. It kindles something raw and animal in Castiel’s gut, and he touches Dean’s waist, the softness of his belly through two layers of cotton.

Notre Dame is a short walk, and the morning air feels good, crisp and fresh as it rolls off the water of the Seine, on Castiel’s skin. He’s wearing the jacket Dean bought for him, its lightweight presence on his shoulders all the reminder he needs to feel a certain breathless anticipation. It may be juvenile, but he reasons to himself that, collectively, he’s been human for so little time, some childishness is forgivable.

Early as it is, the crowd is just beginning to form around the courtyard at the cathedral. Dean is, as he reminds Castiel, a _goddamn professional_ , and with a little coaching—“Just say _pardonnez-moi_ and try not to mangle the pronunciation too badly,” Castiel advises—he breezes them past most of the growing throng of families, yawning adults with steaming cups of coffee and disinterested children milling around their feet.

Inside, the nave stretches out long and open, and even Dean’s steps falter as he gapes. Castiel breathes in and out and remembers that God had loved churches not for their opulence but for the quiet contemplation they once inspired.

Still, it is beautiful. _Dean_ is beautiful against the stained glass, a scattering of unruly spikes of hair still sticking up at the back of his head. He whistles, a low sound that echoes in the building’s near-oppressive quietude.

Castiel walks two fingertips down the line of Dean’s spine. “Lovely,” he says, close to whispering.

Dean’s eyelids flutter. He rubs at the crook of his right elbow where the Mark is hidden by his clothing. 

“You’re gonna have to get in the driver’s seat, Cas.” It isn’t only the language barrier, Castiel suspects—Dean seems discomfited by their surroundings. Castiel spares a moment to will the spell to hold up, to keep the Mark from worsening in petulant reaction to the sanctity of the cathedral.

Georges turns out to be a thin, gawky young man who talks with his hands. He speaks some English and he’s eager to try it out on Dean, but his accent is so thick that Dean can only laugh, then apologize for laughing, then finally laugh some more. It puts Dean at ease, so Castiel is grateful.

“This is a beautiful place,” he tells Castiel once they’ve settled back into French, “but it can attract… phenomena. Local hunters don’t like to think of it, because we rely so heavily on the assumption that God is on our side.”

Dean, who’s fiddling with a lighter and eyeing the tables stacked with free candles for worship, would have some choice words to say about that if he understood. “Of course. Something strange has been happening?”

“Some tourists…” Georges cocks his head to the side, gazing up toward the arches of the ceiling. “They would come ask me if the stained glass was supposed to change as they looked at it. If it was some sort of joke, perhaps vandalism?”

“What were they seeing?”

Georges’ mouth twists distastefully. “Obscenities. Jesus without his robe, or—well. Well-endowed, if you understand my meaning. As if someone was making fun of our stories. I never caught the windows mid-change, but there were multiple families quite upset with us. I did quite a bit of damage control.”

Castiel’s jaw tightens. The story provides the certainty he’d been hoping for—no one but Metatron would be so, well, _irritating_ as they fled across the world with another angel’s grace as a power source—but it makes him ashamed to count Metatron among his siblings, too.

“I think it will have passed,” he tells Georges, working to keep his tone professional, “but if you find that I’m wrong, please don’t hesitate to get ahold of me or my partner. The women at _Le Bistro_ can pass along our contact information.”

He collects Dean, who has lit two candles, and counsels himself against asking what Dean is lighting them for. They’ve barely made it four steps outside the cathedral before Dean slides his phone out of his pocket and starts dialing Charlie.

“Ask about strange sightings at religious institutions,” Castiel urges. “Windows changing, particularly, but anything—”

“Weird religious stuff in Europe,” Dean says into the receiver, not bothering with a greeting. “Go. Do your internet magic.”

Castiel hears Charlie’s laugh across the line, then silence. He can picture her fingers working away, the screens flying past. They amble back toward the hotel, Castiel’s hands in his pockets and every _vin chaud_ advertisement catching a little too much of his interest, until Dean stops halfway across one of the Seine’s bridges and groans.

“Si _beria_? Aren’t we gonna get eaten by a bear or something? Holy shit.”

Charlie’s laughter again, then nothing.

Castiel glances sideways at Dean, raising his eyebrows. “I take it we’re off to Russia.”

Dean pinches his nose between thumb and forefinger. “Shoulda bought you a freaking parka. Wouldn’t look half as good, though.”

“Perhaps we can huddle for warmth,” Castiel suggests. The flush that suffuses Dean’s cheeks and ears is ridiculously gratifying.

“You’re getting the aisle seat,” Dean says, then adds before Castiel can interrupt, “On the _train_. We’re not taking a damn plane just to die out in the wilderness.”

Directing his irrepressible smile at the ground, Castiel doesn’t argue as they walk side by side toward the bed they shared the night before.


	4. Russia

“Dean, there was no way a train would have been fast enough,” Castiel argues.

Dean groans, sinking even further down in his seat. “I bet me’n Baby could’ve made it faster than the stupid train and without me having to get trapped in a flying machine of metal death.”

“Hardly.” Castiel tugs the plane window down more firmly. “Without taking to the air, we would have been in transit for nearly four days no matter what. Four days in which Metatron could have been doing—well, anything. And you know as well as I do that he can get creative when he’s bored. I imagine he’s aware that we’re chasing him and that he’s likely to start taunting us if he feels like we’ve fallen too far behind.”

“Ugh.” Dean pulls his sweatshirt up around his ears, tugs the hood further down over his eyes. “I don’t like you as much when you’re right. It makes you talk a lot.”

“I’m trying to distract you,” Castiel says, peevish. “I know this frightens you.”

“’cause I’m so freaking subtle about it.”

“I meant all of this.” Castiel touches the back of Dean’s hand with two fingertips, feeling the tension of how tightly Dean is gripping the armrest. They’ll land in Moscow soon, but that will lead only to the next plane, this time bearing them to Omsk. “Being so far from home. Not being sure if we’ll find a way to cure the Mark. Whatever—whatever this is.” To underscore the last point, he traces a sigil on the back of Dean’s hand with the pad of his thumb, secure at least that Dean won’t know its meaning. It’s not protective, not for warding. Pure sentimentality.

Dean’s knuckles whiten further. He sucks in a quick, gasping breath. “Hey, man. I’m scared all the time. Nothing new.”

Castiel squeezes Dean’s wrist. “Well, you don’t tend to let it show.”

“Yeah.” Dean forces out a laugh. “This is a different kind of scared, but it’s still scared. Gets me all riled up thinking about all the other stuff that wigs me out, too. Still can’t get that stupid book out of my head.”

Seized with bravery and tenderness, Castiel leans in. He presses his cheek to Dean’s temple, then his mouth. The sweat beading there is sour with Dean’s fear, but he kisses the slight hollow anyway. “I’m scared too. And I’m glad we’re rid of the Book of the Damned. It was bad news.”

“’s all bad news,” Dean says, “but yeah. Yeah, me too. I’d rather go live in a cave on Mars or something than get close to that piece of crap again.”

Castiel brushes his mouth against the curve of Dean’s cheekbone, just skirting the stubble starting to come in thickly along his jaw. “Would you like to hear something ridiculous?”

“Always, dude.”

“Some of the things I’m scared of are the same things you’re scared of.” Castiel closes his eyes and leans his forehead against Dean’s shoulder. His jacket smells like smoke and the inside of the Impala, which Castiel, improbably, misses very much. “What happens when we catch up with Metatron. Whether we’ll manage to catch up with him at all.” He drops his voice. “What will happen to you if we can’t erase the Mark.

“But,” he says, “some of the things I’m scared of are—humiliating, frankly. Being human is terrifying when you’re not used to it. I almost got there, accustomed to it, when I was Steve at the Gas-N-Sip. But that feels like a long time ago, doesn’t it?”

Dean murmurs his assent, smiles for a split-second.

“I’m afraid of the smallest things right now. I’m afraid I’ll eat something that disagrees with me and that my stomach will hurt and that I’ll find out I’m too unaccustomed to pain as a human to act with any dignity at all. I’m afraid of stubbing my toes. I’m afraid of, oh, failing to pay attention and walking into a closed door. The list goes on.”

He has some measure of success, because Dean laughs, his head tipping back a little. “That’s just stuff that happens to people. It all sucks, but life goes on.”

“You have the evidence of that,” Castiel says, “because it’s happened to you, and your life has gone on. I know it—” He taps a fingertip to the side of his own head. “—up here, but I find it difficult to believe. The smallest things feel as if they could be catastrophic.”

Dean’s teeth worry at his lower lip. He works free of his grip on the armrest and turns his hand over, sliding his fingers into the spaces between Castiel’s and hanging on tightly. “You’ll figure it out,” he says, “if you have to. But I don’t want you to have to. I wanna get your grace back for you.”

Castiel genuinely can’t tell if the lump rising in his throat signifies tears or laughter. He shuts his eyes and strokes the inside of Dean’s wrist. “I know. It’s kind of you.”

“Nah, I don’t do kind.” There’s a smile in Dean’s voice. “I’m just a stubborn asshole.”

Castiel hums under his breath, acknowledgment but not agreement. “A stubborn asshole who’s only about fifteen minutes from landing in Moscow. Don’t forget to have your passport handy.”

“Gee, thanks, Mr. Boy Scout. Don’t worry, me and, uh, Walter Newell are gonna make it through customs.”

It’s markedly chillier in Moscow, the air biting its way through Castiel’s jacket as they shuffle from the airplane into Sheremetyevo. He yanks the zipper all the way up to his chin and keeps close to Dean, who doesn’t yet seem bothered by the cold.

Russian could hardly differ more starkly from French, and Castiel feels a headache threatening as he considers the Cyrillic signage littering the airport. Dean looks even more pained, drawing to a halt and, for the first time in Castiel’s recollection, seeming entirely out of place.

“Shit,” he mutters into Castiel’s ear, “am I ever glad you’re a walking Rosetta Stone.”

“You flatter me.” Castiel checks the time on the nearby arrivals board. “We have about an hour. Is there anything you desperately want out of your stay in Moscow, Mr. Winchester?”

“Uh, someone who speaks English?” Dean laughs. “And maybe a cheeseburger.”

“I’m afraid I’m all you’ve got.”

The affectionate tap, two of Dean’s fingers to Castiel’s chin, comes as a surprise. “Guess there are worse guys to be stuck with. You could use a shave, by the way. Prickly.”

“I’ll probably cut myself,” Castiel says honestly. “Theoretical knowledge doesn’t translate so smoothly to practical application, I’ve found out.”

“Then I guess that one’s on me. You do the talkin’, I’ll do the shavin’.”

They pass the rest of their layover quietly, Castiel forging on in the by-the-numbers fantasy novel and Dean contemplative, hands folded across his stomach and chin tipped toward the ceiling.

Castiel had known that Russia was huge—of course he had; he’d witnessed its creation, its founding, the shifting of its massive borders. Still, the flight stretches on interminably, Dean’s fear and misery palpable even to commonplace human senses.

They hold hands most of the journey. Dean’s palm goes clammy, his grip tightens so that it’s uncomfortable, and Castiel holds onto him. His heart’s too busy soaring to foolish heights at the evidence of Dean’s affection to mind the loss of circulation to his fingers.

It’s dark in that thin, gray sort of way that Siberia has when they land at Tsentralny Airport just southwest of Omsk proper. Dean’s jaw clicks and pops with relief of tension.

Tired and made lazy, admittedly fearful of the cold, Castiel checks them into the hotel nearest the airport. It’s a squat off-white building just a thirty-minute walk, brisk but not frigid and made easier by the obvious pleasure Dean takes in strolling on solid ground again. The Russian rolls guttural off his tongue, more natural with every word, and it draws a curious look or three from Dean. The fluency of Castiel’s speech proves an asset—the hotel attendants know that Dean is an American, but Castiel passes for Russian and they’re shown to their room without further interrogation.

Their room, which has two beds. Castiel hesitates, unsure.

Dean saves him by tossing the large suitcase onto the bed farther from the window and letting the springs creak on impact. “Let’s just use this one to hold our stuff.” He smiles guilelessly at Castiel.

“Yes.” Grateful, Castiel goes along with Dean, succumbing to the lure of sleep and the reassurance of Dean, yawning his way into unconsciousness less than a foot away.

 

Dean squints, the tip of his tongue flashing pink as it pokes out between his teeth. He tilts his head to one side, and Castiel mirrors the angle.

“Okay,” Dean says, “that’s better. You’ve been getting pretty scruffy.”

“I thought you liked it,” Castiel says. “ _Nice peach fuzz_ , remember?”

Dean’s expression turns downright owlish. “I—hey, I didn’t say I didn’t—you’re cheating with your supercomputer memory thing.”

“You’re not telling me you don’t remember that.” Castiel drags in a quick breath. Dean’s thumb is warm and rough-skinned, putting just a little pressure against his throat.

When Dean doesn’t answer, some unfindable space in Castiel’s chest turns hollow.

“You wouldn’t be doing this if we were home with Sam and Charlie,” he says, “would you?”

“Huh?” Dean’s curled his fingers around Castiel’s jaw, the razor poised with the blades pressed to Castiel’s cheek.

Certain that this conversation isn’t a good idea and unable to resist, Castiel says, “Touching me, I mean. Letting me touch you. Acknowledging—us.”

“Us.”

“Dean. Please.”

Now Dean sucks in a ragged breath, loud in the cramped bathroom. Morning sun’s coming in from the bedroom, through the window that gives them an inglorious view of the hotel parking lot.

“Give me a break,” Dean says. His voice is small.

“I’m not asking for anything but honesty.” And surely it’s a display of trust, pushing Dean’s insecurities into the light while Dean holds a razor bare inches from Castiel’s neck, while Castiel bares his throat to Dean’s touch and expertise.

Dean breathes one more time and, quiet, shaves one, two, three strokes across Castiel’s cheek, through the thin layer of shaving cream. “I don’t know. I’m not trying to string you along, Cas. I just really don’t know.”

Castiel nods incrementally, careful not to dislodge Dean’s hands from their course. “I’d like to think you would, eventually.”

“Yeah.” Dean’s mouth moves against Castiel’s forehead, his lips dry. “Me too. This stupid Mark—”

“Yeah.” Castiel wants to move, to lean up and kiss Dean’s mouth, and it would be so easy, but he thinks Dean may need to be the one who makes that choice. “I know. Don’t apologize.”

Dean’s chuckle rolls through from the top of Castiel’s head down to his toes, cold and bare against grubby bathroom floor tile. “Thought you couldn’t read my mind anymore.”

“No. But I know you.”

With one last deliberate sweep of the razor, Dean’s finished with Castiel’s face. He touches Castiel’s ear, pushes a few strands of hair back from Castiel’s temple. “Eventually you’re gonna need a haircut. I’m no expert, but I do my own and it turns out okay.”

Castiel opens his eyes and smiles at the unexpectedness of Dean’s features set in uncertainty and hope. “You always look very handsome,” he says. “I don’t mind my hair getting a bit longer, though.” There’s a certain comfort in his vessel—his _body_ —changing, growing, making his skin belong to him more than it did all those years of stasis.

“Mm, yeah.” Not quite looking Castiel in the eye, Dean wraps a lock of Castiel’s hair around his fingertip, then lets it go. “Doesn’t look so shabby, actually. Guess we’ll wait a couple more weeks.”

“For a haircut,” Castiel cuts in. “Not—”

Dean laughs, ducking his head. “No way are we waiting a couple more weeks for anything else around here.”

Satisfied, Castiel smiles and presses his mouth to a soft spot just under the line of Dean’s jaw, breathing in the musty, sleepy smell of his skin. It’s another promise, or close to one, and he’ll hold it in his ribcage for the rest of their day.

“Now clench your jaw,” Dean instructs, brandishing his razor. “I missed a couple spots. Just, uh—you know, tap into your inner Hulk.”

“I don’t have a green rage monster inside me,” Castiel says, “at least, not that I’m aware of.”

Dean grins, white teeth and peppermint breath, easy charm. “You know what I mean, asshole. I dunno, think about Metatron. You’re pissed at him, right?”

“Extremely,” Castiel says gravely.

“All right!” Dean pats his freshly-smooth cheek. “Castiel’s revenge quest. Got a cool ring to it. You gotta look appropriately steely and angry, that’s all.”

Castiel fails entirely, unable to stop smiling, but with the way Dean keeps laughing, he’s pretty sure that they can call it even.

 

Castiel lets Dean drive them into the city, relishing the glee on Dean’s face as he announces that their rental car has a manual transmission. It’s clear that the simple act of driving helps drain some of the tension from Dean—he leans back in his seat, cracking the window despite the chill in the air, turning up the radio. He doesn’t even complain about the Russian music; instead, he drums his fingers against the wheel in a vague approximation of the rhythm of whatever’s playing.

“That one,” Castiel says, pointing out the Dormition Cathedral.

The building’s impossible to miss, robin’s-egg blue domes and golden spires stark against the gray of the Siberian sky. The gardens and courtyards stretch out in front, no parking for at least half a mile, but the walk toward it is nearly worth the inconvenience—the shuttered awe flickering in Dean’s eyes, the ease with which he hooks two fingers of one hand into the belt loop of Castiel’s jeans. Castiel snakes his hand up under Dean’s jacket, settling at the small of Dean’s back where he’s warm and supple, and leaves it there when Dean shoots him a tentative smile.

It must be the off-season—there are only a handful of tourists, and many of them look more like pilgrims than gawking passersby. The atmosphere is hushed, reverent.

A woman straightens from her worship and catches Castiel’s eye. He’s _certain_ that he knows her, the surety of it curling tight in the pit of his stomach, and then the knowledge vanishes like a plume of smoke on the wind. She’s only a woman, pulling her scarf tight about her neck as she hurries out of the building.

“That guy,” Dean says, so close to Castiel’s ear that he comes close to jumping with surprise, “he’s gotta be a regular. Look how easy he’s walking around.”

This kind of human observation is what comes easily to Dean, what makes his presence an asset even when they’re across the globe from Dean’s native country. Dean reaches up and directs Castiel’s face with fingertips at his chin until they’re both looking the same direction, a nondescript middle-aged Russian man with a close-trimmed beard and his coat collar turned up around his ears.

Castiel hesitates. The man’s almost certainly not a hunter and not likely to be receptive to Castiel’s line of interrogation.

Dean sighs, stepping a foot or two away from Castiel. “Act like a tourist,” he says, “but a tourist who’s really into this place. You wanna come, I dunno, get your religion on. You figure this guy knows what he’s doing.”

Grateful, Castiel steps forward rather than kissing the bemused quirk of Dean’s mouth the way he wants to. He yearns for his grace, for the reassurance of his connection to Heaven, for anything familiar to steady him in this moment—but the fond warmth of Dean’s gaze settling between his shoulder blades will have to do.

“Excuse me,” he starts.

Andrei is a friendly man made friendlier by the tenets of his strict adherence to Christianity. When Castiel lies and claims that he’s seeking greater devoutness of his own life, that Omsk’s Assumption Cathedral in its outer beauty and inner austerity has inspired him, Andrei comes to life, explaining the life and times of Bishop Sylvester. The knowledge has been stored somewhere in Castiel’s vast memory, but with Andrei’s prompting, it comes loose, and he holds his own. Whether he’s convincing, he can’t know, but every time he directs a helpless glance at Dean, who is ambling with his hands in his pocket and a nearly-convincing impression of a believer in place, Dean grins and gives him a thumbs-up.

“Things have,” Andrei admits, “been strange lately.”

“Lately,” Castiel says, pressing. “What does _lately_ mean?”

Lately means very lately—the past day or so, visitors whose intentions are apparently not so pure. It’s Siberia, hardly a tourist hub, but there have been more. At first, the cathedral’s smattering of employees had been excited, searching the internet for the source of their surge in traffic, but then they’d grown annoyed. The new visitors had been impolite, downright vulgar; they’d scratched their initials into the marble and gold, obscene images and mockery of the church, leaving with their laughter trailing behind them.

“Thank you,” Castiel says. He’s in earnest, and Andrei smiles tentatively, most likely imagining that Castiel is some mildly sacrilegious traveler from the western part of Russia. 

Dean touches Castiel’s back, right between his shoulder blades. His wings had sprung from there, once upon a time, and his concentration is effectively snapped. This is the sort of power that Dean holds over him.

“He’s been here.”

Dean scowls. “Figures. Son of a bitch.”

“Maybe,” Castiel says, venturing a wry smile. “God doesn’t necessarily adhere to any particular gender. Maybe _bitch_ is an appropriate term after all.”

And there it is, Dean’s resigned laughter. “Maybe we better give the Scooby Gang another call.”

 

First, their next hotel. Dean’s happy to drive as Castiel scowls down at the too-small screen of his cell phone, Googling their options. It’s difficult to remain annoyed at the opacity of travel websites when his backdrop is Dean humming tunelessly to Russian radio, Dean laughing every time he catches a glimpse of what he deems Castiel’s _grumpy gills face_.

Thanks to their price range, they wind up ensconced in a statuesque white building, its courtyards bursting with flowers and its radiators on the fritz. Dean cringes and apologizes and starts talking about credit limits, but Castiel shushes him with a hand over his mouth and a smile.

He’s not so upset as he could be. It’s cold, yes—but Dean is warm. Dean is _very_ warm. He has Dean’s presence to reassure his body and the little notebook of Hindu mythology to occupy his mind.

It’s a lovely account, detailed and nicely illustrated, and some of the connections it draws between aspects of the gods are new to Castiel. He reads over the last few pages for the second time, like that will coax the promised second volume into existence, while Dean turns on the computer.

“You might’ve caught up with him,” Sam says over Skype, clearly aiming for encouragement.

“So what? How do we actually _find_ him?”

Sam sighs. Next to him, twirling slowly in an office chair, Charlie pulls a face. “No idea.”

“Wow,” Dean says, dangerously close to whining, “I’m so freakin’ glad we called you guys.”

Sam’s next sigh is deeper, longer, most likely for effect. “He’s been moving east, right? It’s not rocket science to say so should you. Keep on keeping on, you know.”

“That will take us to Asia before long,” Castiel says.

“Cool.” Charlie grins. “Don’t listen to Dean if he starts getting weird about the food. He’ll eat anything.”

“Been there, done that,” Castiel assures her.

Dean groans and uses his shoulders to urge Castiel out of the way. “Asia is pretty big, if you guys hadn’t noticed. Yeah, I’ve looked at a damn map in my life. A little more guidance?”

Charlie’s face looms suddenly large and serious. “Give me, I dunno, the rest of the day to do research. That’ll make it morning for you guys. We’ll get back in touch.”

Dean’s face softens, and he nods. “Yeah, but don’t push yourself.”

“Fine, and you don’t be too mean to Cas over there. I dunno, give him a backrub or something. I bet he needs it, hot-off-the-press human and stuck with your sorry ass.” Charlie smiles, a flash of ruefulness there, then vanished. “We miss you around here. Sam’s going all tragic hero on me.”

“Hey, don’t get too sentimental. Whichever one of us makes it home’ll drag the other one’s corpse behind ’em.”

“You’re not funny,” Sam cuts in, his expression drawn. “We’ll talk to you two soon, okay?” The video cuts out.

Dean pushes back from the laptop, slams it shut. His shoulders are tense.

Tentative, Castiel touches Dean’s hip. They’re side by side at the edge of the bed, the computer perched on the velvet-cushioned chair they’d pulled out from the room’s miniscule desk. “Maybe you’re the one who needs a backrub.”

Some sort of dam breaks. Dean laughs, but the sound isn’t humorous—it’s wrenched out of him, nearly a sob, and he collapses backward with his hands cupped over his face. The cage of his fingers makes his breathing turn harsh and labored.

Castiel works three fingers beneath the waistband of Dean’s jeans. Not far, only enough to touch bare skin, then the soft elastic of his boxers. The touch draws a muffled sigh.

“Nah,” Dean says, so quiet it’s hardly more than his next exhale. “Nah, you’ve needed one longer than me, don’t you think?”

“No idea,” Castiel admits.

Dean looks at him for a long moment; it stretches out, splintering into fractals of meaning and longing and the thoughtful heaviness of Dean’s consideration. There are already prickles of stubble coming in around his cheeks and chin, golden and bristling, and Castiel shifts back, stretches out next to Dean, touches them with curious, gentle fingers.

“Hold still.” Dean’s voice comes out a rasp, low.

Castiel obeys for lack of a better idea, and then Dean’s hands are firm at his shoulders, turning him and bearing him down against the mattress. His breath hiccups and he presses his face to the crook of his own elbow.

“Okay.” Dean’s breath hitches in turn, then steadies. He swings a leg over Castiel’s back, straddling the spread of his hips and radiating warmth and focus through the fabric of Castiel’s button-down shirt. Castiel’s not sure if he wishes he’d worn less clothing, or more. “I got no idea what I’m doing,” Dean says, “just warnin’ you.”

“Dean.” Castiel shifts, then rolls his shoulders back. An open invitation, as much of one as he dares. “I don’t mean to sound pornographic, but—just touch me. Anything will feel good.”

There comes a sharp intake of breath, and then it’s Dean’s turn to obey. He smooths his palms across Castiel’s shoulders, calluses catching and dragging along cotton and polyester. His thumbs dig in, firm, dragging down and sweeping along the shapes of Castiel’s shoulder blades until he twitches and groans. All Castiel’s instincts say to arch up, to meet the pressure of Dean’s hands, but Dean told him to hold still, and Dean is afraid, and Castiel has rarely wanted anything but to ease Dean’s fear, from the moment he caught sight of Dean’s soul wild-eyed and tattered in the bowels of Hell. So he concentrates on stillness and on the way Dean’s thighs are framing his own waist, radiating warmth.

“Like I said,” he pants. “Feels very good.”

The sound Dean makes—Castiel isn’t sure it can be called a laugh, not as breathless as it is. “Yeah, well, you’re pretty tense.” He rolls his thumbs against the knots that live just under Castiel’s shoulder blades. “Especially right here.”

Castiel groans; his muscles twitch involuntarily, goosebumps breaking out along the flesh of his arms and the back of his neck. “I can’t imagine why.”

Quiet, save the whispery slick sound of Dean licking his lips. “Will they come back? When we get your grace back, I mean.”

“I don’t know.” Castiel shifts, distantly aware of the mounting ache low between his legs. “I hope so. They’re unimpressive anyway.”

Dean’s laugh is a puff of breath against Castiel’s neck. “Oh, yeah? That why you like showing ’em off so much, ’cause they’re so lame and uncool?”

“Make that unimpressive to other angels,” Castiel amends. “Demons, humans—wings are wings. But mine, by now… I’ve seen quite a few battles.”

“Aw, hey.” Dean’s thumbs, sure and strong, slide down the muscles alongside Castiel’s spine. “Chicks dig scars.”

Castiel hums, prickles of pleasure-pain lolling in his veins. “Do chicks?”

“Yeah.” Before Castiel can brace himself, Dean’s fingers press into the swell of flesh at the rise of Castiel’s ass. He whimpers. “Yeah, they do.”

Dean’s forehead comes to rest at the place where Castiel’s neck and shoulder join. He’s shaking a little.

The weight of Dean holds Castiel in place, but he isn’t afraid. Dean’s right arm works its way under Castiel, palm pressed flat up under his shirt and pinned between Castiel’s stomach and the mattress. Maybe it helps, physically trapping the site of the Mark like that.

“You think we waited too long?” Dean sneaks the words into the curve of Castiel’s shoulder. Like he can disown them, like he can pretend the tremor in his voice doesn’t belong to him.

“Too long for what?” Castiel knows the answer, but he wants to hear Dean say it.

Dean’s stubble rasps against Castiel’s neck. He breathes, so Castiel breathes with him.

“This,” Dean says. He kisses the hollow spot behind Castiel’s ear, skin so terminally neglected that this careful skittering of touch and damp breath makes Castiel shudder. “Cas, c’mon. You know I—”

Perhaps it’s cruel, but Castiel prompts him. Needs to hear this confession in its entirety. “You what?”

“I.” Thick fingers curl and tuck alongside Castiel’s ribcage, nearly finding hiding spaces beneath his bones. “I want the dumbest things. With you. I don’t think I’m gonna get over you.” Hushed, secretive: “Maybe ever.”

A knot in Castiel’s chest frays, loosens, comes undone. He’s not alone.

“I know I won’t get over you,” he says. Above him, Dean slumps, pushing his nose into Castiel’s hair, his breath stuttering. “As if you didn’t know,” Castiel adds, fondly chastising.

“Mm. ’m a friggin’ champion of shitty self-esteem.”

“Shh.” Castiel reaches back, hangs onto the meat of Dean’s thigh in its soft denim armor. “You asked me to give you a break. This is it. And no, I don’t think so.”

“Hmm?” Dean’s teeth glance against Castiel’s jugular, so gentle.

“No,” Castiel says again, “I don’t think so. I don’t think we waited too long.”

Dean makes a shivery noise and buries his face against the side of Castiel’s neck. He’s frightened and he’s trying and Castiel loves him, all the chambers of his half-human heart alight with the ferocity of it.

 

Castiel doesn’t remember falling asleep until he’s stirring awake, cold pressing in at his back and front and sides and all over. He shivers, mutters a protest, reaches out and whines when his hands encounter nothing but empty air and crisply-pressed sheets.

“Wakey-wakey, eggs and bakey.”

“ _Dean_?”

The rich sound of Dean’s laugh is unmistakable. “Nah, it’s Santa Claus. Yep, Dean Winchester at your service.”

Spurred into action, Castiel scrubs the heels of his palms against his eyes until light filters in. Dusky, late evening, framing the broadness of Dean’s shoulders as he looms over the bed and looks down at Castiel with a smile tugging at the pink of his mouth.

“Hi.” Dean touches Castiel’s jaw, so quickly Castiel barely registers his touch. It _is_ cold in the room, iciness brought into stark relief by the brusque warmth of Dean’s fingers. “You fell asleep. I figured I’d get us some food.”

“ _Yes._ ” Castiel springs upright, his stomach insistent.

The fare is simple and Dean laughs as he recounts the story of obtaining it—the clownish gestures he’d resorted to using in order to communicate, the painful experience of trudging from bank to bank begging to exchange dollars or Euros for rubles.

“You could have woken me,” Castiel points out around his piping-hot, delicious mouthful of pirozhki. “You may have noticed that I can speak Russian.”

Tenderness flickers its hesitant way across Dean’s features. He sips his tea, sweetened with jam and near-boiling in its Styrofoam cup, and doesn’t look at Castiel as he says, “You wouldn’t’ve been able to wake yourself up either. You’re tired, buddy.”

“So are you.”

“And I,” Dean says, “am used to it.”

“You asked me to give you a break.” Castiel wipes his mouth on the back of his hand. “I’d be happy to.”

“Back atcha.”

 _I’m rubber, you’re glue,_ Castiel is tempted to retort, a childish refrain echoing from one of the hundreds of TV shows with dialogue floating around somewhere in the recesses of his memory.

He eats instead, knowing that food is how Dean shows he cares.

Sam is meant to email, then log onto Skype when he and Charlie have found something of worth; until then, Dean and Castiel have the evening to themselves. They move with care, Dean’s hands glancing against Castiel’s shoulders and hips and then drawing back as if he’s been burned. It’s old and new at once, the yearning simmering for so many years that it’s boiled down almost to nothing until Dean’s smile stokes the flames once again.

Once the remnants of their meal are cleared away, Dean instructs Castiel to lie down again, on his side this time. Hesitant and curious, Castiel goes, all at once too aware of the length of his limbs and unsure where to put them. What will Dean find appealing?

The hotel TV clicks on, volume turned to low. Castiel could pay attention, could understand the murmurs of the Russian newscasters, but he won’t. Not when there’s Dean, settling in next to Castiel with his body curved so there’s a pocket of space between them that’s all their own.

“I meant it,” Dean murmurs, “when I said I don’t know. Dunno if you noticed, but I got some baggage.”

Castiel smiles. He’s grateful for Dean’s honesty. “Well, then, I’m looking for baggage that goes with mine.”

Dean starts, laughs, a hint of embarrassment to the sound. “Seriously? _Rent_? How’d you—?”

Apologetic, Castiel touches the back of Dean’s hand. “When I put you back together,” he says, “I learned things. I couldn’t forget them all once I began understanding your desire for privacy.”

Dean ducks his head, the corners of his eyes crinkling. “Long as you don’t tell Sammy. He’d never let me live it down.”

Castiel is fairly sure Sam _would_ let Dean live it down, but he nods, tracing the smooth knob of Dean’s wrist with the pad of his thumb. “Your secret is safe with me,” he says, meaning _You’re safe with me._

Dean’s eyelashes shine golden where they flutter against his cheeks. “I wanna think I would’ve manned up.” He worries at his lower lip with his teeth. “But I don’t know. I used to think all the time, gee, Winchester, what would’ve happened if I hadn’t said yes to Cain like a chump?

“But that’s stupid. I did it, it’s over, everything’s fucked up. No point thinkin’, hey, maybe if you weren’t so scared of snapping and wringing his neck, you’d’ve gotten up the stones to kiss Cas.”

Warmth coils in Castiel’s belly.

Dean, flushed and bright-eyed, dares to look up at him.

“Dean,” Castiel says, “you’re not out of time.” There’s a _yet_ , but it doesn’t need to make it into the cold air.

His lips parted and his pulse beating in his throat so fast that Castiel can see it, Dean tucks his hand around the back of Castiel’s neck, big square palm cradling him where he’s most vulnerable, thumb to the hinge of Castiel’s jaw.

“Please.”

Dean leans in and kisses him, mouth and eyes open.

At first, Castiel is frozen. His jaw slackens and he can only feel it, the cling and drag of Dean’s lips against his own, one kiss, then two, then a third. They’re soft and brief, Dean breathing into his mouth.

“Hey,” Dean says, his voice tight, “you with me?”

“ _Yes_ ,” Castiel says, desperate; he pulls Dean closer with a hand at the hem of his T-shirt and kisses him back, sloppy, wanting more, wanting to prove how much he wants. It’s Dean who mumbles some formless reassurance into Castiel’s mouth, gentles him with fingers stroking through the sleep-mussed curls of Castiel’s hair. Humanity blinds him, but he imagines he can sense the radiance of Dean’s soul stretching toward him nonetheless, the ways they desire each other tangling up in the rising warmth between their bodies.

Dean’s tongue is sweet like the jam in their tea, hot and smooth in Castiel’s mouth. Castiel’s blood thunders in his veins and his ears. Everything is huge, monumental—the rasp of Dean’s fingers at his hip, finding bare skin under Castiel’s shirt; the slick slide of Dean’s tongue at the backs of Castiel’s teeth; the labored edge to Dean’s breathing.

“Oh,” Castiel says. He squirms as Dean palms at his hipbone. “Oh, Dean.”

“Mmhmm.” There’s a smile in Dean’s voice. “That doesn’t suck, huh?”

Castiel shivers, cold air at his back and warm Dean at his front. “You’re good at that.”

“Dunno about that. Maybe.” Dean’s mouth is exploring the swell of Castiel’s lower lip, his clean-shaven throat. “I think it might just be that we like each other.”

“Oh, do we.” Castiel laughs. He feels dazed, blissful and idiotic. “You taste good.”

“Cas.” Just that, the nickname, drenched with affection. Dean’s kisses have made it to Castiel’s collarbone, Dean’s nose pushing the collar of his T-shirt out of the way. “You’re not so bad yourself.” Dean sucks at Castiel’s skin and the pressure of it, the suction of his mouth, jolts all the way down to Castiel’s growing erection.

“That feels,” Castiel manages, breathless, “so good.”

In a flurry of limbs, Dean has pulled Castiel up against his chest, firm arms around his middle and face buried against the side of Castiel’s neck. Dean is hard, too, a line of heat wedged against Castiel’s thigh.

“Dean?”

Dean lets loose a long, shaky breath. He kisses the top of Castiel’s head. “Thanks. Uh, for the—for pushing me a little bit.”

Castiel spreads his fingers at the small of Dean’s back. Under his shirts, downy hairs—impossibly soft—gather at the base of his spine. “I know you’re still scared. I’m afraid, too.”

“Yeah?” Dean chuckles. It’s his self-deprecating laugh, which Castiel recognizes all too easily. “Don’t think I’m a tease, but can we just—”

“Anything,” Castiel promises before Dean can reach the end of his request. “You’re not out of time. Remember?”

Against Castiel’s side, the fingers of Dean’s right hand twitch. A reminder that the clock _is_ ticking; an encouragement to Castiel, to be sure that he fights for as much time as he can possibly earn for the two of them.

“Yeah.” Dean sighs, his cheek to Castiel’s temple. “Yeah, okay.”

The TV murmurs incoherently in the background. Castiel breathes, listens to Dean doing the same, to the slowing tempo of Dean’s heartbeat where it echoes near Castiel’s own chest.

 

In the morning, as promised, Sam and Charlie call, and the group of them resumes attending to their search.

Castiel struggles to look away from the tilt of Dean’s smile as they disentangle. They’re both mussed, one of Dean’s cheeks red where it had lain pressed against Castiel’s shoulder for most of the night. The room had remained cold, perhaps some atmospheric feature of Siberian tourism, and so Castiel’s hands had remained firmly up the back of Dean’s shirt. Dean had snored into Castiel’s neck and Castiel had hooked his ankle around the back of Dean’s thigh.

Sam hesitates when he sees them—maybe it’s the hand Castiel sets at Dean’s shoulder. Or the way Dean reaches back and rests his palm over the back of Castiel’s.

“Well?” Dean’s gruff, as if challenging Sam to comment on any perceived changes between himself and Castiel. “You guys have something for us, right?”

Sam sighs. Behind him, Charlie smiles, waves, and directs a wink in Castiel’s general direction. “Maybe,” she says. “He’s moving pretty fast—you guys are keeping up, but barely. We figured maybe you should try leapfrogging him.”

“Get ahead of him?” Fingers curling tighter around Castiel’s hand, Dean leans forward and frowns at the computer screen. “Sounds good, but… y’know, how? Just keep goin’ east fast as we can?”

“Metatron’s slated to hit Asia. Maybe he already has by now.” Sam succumbs to distraction for a moment, clacking keyboard sounds filtering through the Skype connection. “And we know he’s hitting up cathedrals, screwing with the tourists.”

“I don’t think he can resist causing havoc to some degree,” Castiel says irritably. “This is about as much as he can do without his own grace.”

“The largest cathedral in Asia is in the Philippines,” Charlie says, holding up her cell phone to the screen.

“The Basilica of St. Martin of Tours,” Castiel says.

“Right! I mean, it’s just a guess, but—”

“Not a bad guess.” Dean rakes two hands through his hair. “From Siberia to the friggin’ Philippines. I better get some insane frequent flyer miles after this.”

“Yeah,” Sam says, “and a gold-plated bag to vomit in.”

“Dean hasn’t vomited yet,” Castiel supplies.

“Cool. Thanks, guys. Enough talking about me puking in Cas’ lap. How fast can you two book us a flight?”

Sam’s expression shifts to one of solemn trepidation. “You’re not gonna like this,” he says, “but just so you know, it’s gonna be a long trip.”

“Hey, the layover’ll be nice and long. Recovery time!” Charlie’s thumbs-up hovers in the corner of the screen. “Speaking of, I think I’m getting my joystick muscles toned up again.”

“Great,” Dean grunts. “Shoot some aliens in the face for me while I’m drowning in the Pacific.”

Castiel rubs his thumb along the tensing slope of Dean’s shoulder. “We’ll pack and wait for an itinerary.”

A small shiver runs down Dean’s spine as Castiel’s fingernails scratch through the short hairs at the nape of his neck. He lets out a breath. “Thanks again. Promise we’ll be home before you can even desecrate my room too much. Lookin’ at you, Sam.”


	5. The Philippines

Their first flight takes them to Hong Kong. Castiel holds Dean’s hand—as they shuffle and lie through way through customs, as Dean flirts them through security with only a flash of nauseated horror to his expression. As they wait by the gate, Dean rubbing nervous circles into Castiel’s palm and scowling down at the floor of the airport.

“So,” Castiel tells him, flipping past another page of his novel, “they’re seeking the villain’s lair right now. I imagine they’ll encounter a multitude of obstacles along the way.”

Dean chuckles through gritted teeth and squeezes Castiel’s fingers. “What’cha wanna bet they’re gonna have to pick up a bunch of cool enchanted artifacts, too? Ooh, is there a hot elf chick?”

Castiel frowns at the next string of paragraphs. “I believe she’s half elf, and the narrator certainly finds her attractive, but I’m not sure what we’re supposed to think of her motivations.”

“Jesus.” Dean laughs again, a bit easier this time. “I swear I read that one a couple years back, but that trash doesn’t really stick to the memory. Tolkien’s probably spinning in his grave, poor dead bastard.”

“Maybe.” Castiel wants to kiss Dean again. He’s not sure what it is. Maybe the lilting sound of Dean’s laugh, maybe the press of Dean’s hand solid in his own. Maybe nothing more than Dean and the breadth of his shoulders and the charmingly skeptical looks he keeps shooting toward the gaggle of Chinese schoolgirls occupying the rest of their aisle. Dean’s trapped by the window, Castiel wedged into the middle, and there’s one young girl studiously absorbed in her schoolwork taking up the aisle seat.

Dredging up the last of his resolve, Castiel moves closer but doesn’t kiss the wet sheen of Dean’s mouth or the soft angle of his jaw. He noses at Dean’s temple, contemplates biting Dean’s earlobe.

“Jesus,” Dean hisses between his teeth. “Cas.”

“You started it,” Castiel says.

“Yeah, _last night._ We’re on a friggin’ plane.”

Castiel makes a distant sound of acknowledgment. “Isn’t there such a thing as the, hm, Mile High Club?”

“ _Jesus_ ,” Dean says again. He sounds torn between laughter and frustration. “You watched too much TV. Or—whatever. Absorbed too much TV at the hands of the jerkiest angel of all time. That’s not really a thing and even if it was, I’d probably fuck up the sexy vibe by puking down your shirt or somethin’.”

Ah, yes. Shame burns in Castiel’s stomach for a moment. His desire had been so great that he had forgotten himself, forgotten Dean’s fear. A moment of human failing—innocuous, in the grand scheme of things, but jarring. Jarring that Dean’s soul is so inaccessible to his senses that he _could_ forget Dean’s unhappiness even for a moment.

“Whoa.” Dean turns, rubs his chin against the side of Castiel’s face. “Don’t go all looking like you just shot my puppy. I’m the guy freaking out over the thing that’s actually safer than the insane amounts of driving I usually do. Statistically. Ask Sam about it.”

“I miss my wings,” Castiel says, succumbing to the bitterness in his gut.

“Yeah, I kinda miss them right now, too.” Dean’s grip on Castiel’s hand hasn’t loosened.

“After this,” Castiel promises, “no more flying. For a long time.”

“Yeah.” Dean’s voice softens. “Yeah, I’d be okay with that long as you’re planning to hang around.”

Castiel kisses Dean’s face in answer: his ear, the rise of his cheekbone, the lovely mostly-straight bridge of his nose. “We’re not,” he says, “out of time.” He needs to believe that, and so he does—so he chooses it, and them.

 

Time may be in abundance, but Castiel lacks patience. Particularly when Dean holds open the bathroom stall’s door and crooks a smile his way.

He had meant to wash his hands, splash cold water on his face, and return to their waiting area, but Dean’s smile is growing. He steps inside and Dean is on him like a force of nature.

“Is this,” Castiel gasps, “really the best place? Or time?”

Dean frames Castiel’s face with his hands and kisses him again. Deeper, harder, sucking at his lower lip and then at his tongue when Castiel opens up to him with a sobbing sound from somewhere deep in his throat. “Cas.” He stills with his forehead to Castiel’s, breathing slow and ragged.

A few stalls down, someone flushes, muttering in Mandarin. The men’s bathroom is clean, smelling of antiseptic rather than human waste, but their surroundings certainly aren’t romantic.

“Cas,” Dean repeats. He tucks three fingers below the waistband of Castiel’s jeans, under the sweatshirt purchased less than thirty minutes ago at the Hong Kong International Airport gift shop. “You want me to stop? I can stop.”

“No,” Castiel says, truthful, before rationality can catch up with him. “No. I’ve been thinking about kissing you for hours. You know I have.”

He feels Dean’s smile blossom slow against his own mouth. “Yeah. I kinda noticed. Wait, say that again.”

“Dean.” Castiel shifts, realigns, and slots his thigh between Dean’s legs, the growing hardness there. If it’s honesty Dean wants, Castiel can provide in spades. “I’ve been thinking about kissing you for years. Since before I knew what it was I wanted. I would look at your mouth—I would think about it so much, in contexts that made no sense, and I didn’t understand for the longest time.”

A breath punches out of Dean’s lungs. He looks abruptly young, wide-eyed and yearning.

Castiel wants so badly that he can’t decide where to begin. All he can do is crowd closer, wrap himself around Dean where they’re leaning against the tiled bathroom wall. It’s a pale but satisfying imitation of holding Dean’s soul in his hands, taking all that burning righteousness into himself and cradling it against his grace.

“I mean it,” he adds. “And if you want this, I don’t want to stop. If you want me.”

Dean tugs at him until they’re flush against each other. “You got no idea how much I want you.”

“I’m beginning to get the idea,” Castiel says. It’s in the thrum of Dean’s heart against his own, the way Dean bites back a whining noise and lets his hips hitch up against Castiel’s thigh. And oh, it’s heady, Dean’s arousal heavy and _there_ , and Castiel is, for the time being, only human. He palms at the outline of Dean’s cock in his jeans and sips the resulting series of breathless sounds directly from Dean’s lips. “Is that good? Does that feel good?”

“Cas.” Dean whines and rolls his hips. “You know it does.”

“No,” Castiel admits, “I don’t know. I want to make you feel good.”

Dean groans, frustration or lust or perhaps both, and draws Castiel into a fresh kiss. Their mouths are open, their shared breath hot and needy, every tiny shift of their bodies sending a fresh tumble of pleasure and aching desire down Castiel’s spine where it pools at his core, throbbing in his erection and pounding in time with his pulse.

“I’ve been so scared,” Dean says. The confession comes slurred against Castiel’s lips. “So fucking scared. Just waiting for the day when I lose my shit and the Mark really fucks me up and I just—”

“ _Dean._ ” Castiel rocks against him, hushes him with one more long, thorough kiss. He’s dimly aware that they’re in public, that this is untoward, but the knowledge pales drastically in comparison with Dean’s hands open and familiar across his ass, pulling him in. “It’s under control.”

“Yeah,” Dean says, huskiness edged with a laugh. “Yeah, ’cause making out in a bathroom in goddamn China is what control looks like.”

Reckless, without warning, Castiel sucks a bruise into the skin below Dean’s ear. He tastes of sweat and soap and he moans, muffling the sound into the back of his own hand as his head falls back against the wall. _Oh_ , Castiel thinks, kissing that same place with his mouth open, _he likes that._

He hears the door swing open again, the sounds of casual conversation.

When there’s time, Castiel vows, he will learn everything. Every sound Dean can make, every beautiful gasp and whimper and plea.

“Show me.”

Dean’s pupils are wide and dark despite the fluorescent lighting. His mouth is pink, almost bruised. “Cas?”

“Show me,” Castiel clarifies, “how to make you come right now. Quickly.”

Dean’s pulse flutters in his neck. His fingers twitch against the back of Castiel’s thigh and where one hand is curled into his own hair. “C’mere,” he says.

Castiel goes. He sinks into Dean, into the open and dirty sweetness of Dean’s kiss. Dean moves under him, with him and alongside him, his hand working under Castiel’s boxers with fingers that curl into the cleft of his ass and urge him into a messy rhythm. The friction-drag of it sends dark curls of pleasure and urgency clutching at the edges of Castiel’s awareness and he thinks he hears himself moaning. He _knows_ he has to kiss Dean too hard to quiet the sobbing noise one or both of them makes as their erections slide together.

“Just,” Dean murmurs, “just—like that, don’t stop, fuck, Cas, you’re—”

“Shhh.” Castiel remembers himself enough to kiss the words from Dean’s mouth. “Shh. I won’t stop.”

They hover on the edge like that, moving inelegantly with each other, until a shiver licks its way through Dean with such force that Castiel can feel it, and Dean arches toward him, digging his heel, heavy and insistent in his steel-toed boot, into the back of Castiel’s thigh. It shifts them, slots them together just right; heat floods Castiel’s senses, makes him overeager and senseless.

“Dean,” he says, “Dean—”

“Yeah, I got you.” Dean quiets him with a kiss, cradles Castiel’s head in the palm of his head, pulling him forward and forward until his orgasm is pulled right out from under the hammering of his heart. He moans, tucks his face against the sweat-damp hollow of Dean’s throat, and comes so hard that he nearly doesn’t notice Dean murmuring into his hair, the _yeah, c’mon, all for me, Cas_.

He mouths at the fluttering point of Dean’s pulse. “And for me?” It comes out as a gravelly rasp, something between a demand and a plea.

Dean groans, slaps his own hand over his mouth again. When he comes, the stretch of his throat lengthens and Castiel sucks and bites at the underside of his jaw, the column of pale skin that disappears into the collar of his shirt. He’s beautiful, one hand stroking aimlessly down Castiel’s spine, fingers of the other shuddering against the side of Castiel’s neck. Castiel can feel the small jerks of his cock through denim, spilling hot into his boxers.

“Thank you,” Castiel says. He slips the words in quiet between Dean’s gasping breaths.

“I—” Dean seems about to protest. He stops, ruffles his fingers up through Castiel’s hair. “You’re welcome.”

Dean cleans them up, laughing under his breath as he shuffles out of their stall to retrieve handfuls of scratchy paper towels. He wets them with warm water at the sink, sinks to his knees and smooths the drying come from Castiel’s belly, dabbing his boxers clean to the best of his abilities.

Another _thank you_ seems inadequate, so Castiel only smiles at him. His vision feels hazy, pleasantly tinged with warmth; when Dean rises to his feet with a grin on his face, Castiel wants to kiss him and touch him all over again.

He settles for an answering smile and for the thrilling visual of Dean tucking himself back into his jeans, resettling his shirt around his shoulders, swatting Castiel fondly on the rear as they hoist their bags back onto their shoulders.

The world outside the bathroom is just the same as it was, which seems astonishing to Castiel. Yawning queues of travelers, routine announcements over the airport’s intercom system. Dean’s hand, ushering him with fingertips pressed between his shoulder blades, is the same size, pressure, breadth. It’s absurd that Castiel should feel so compelled to smile, so incapable of paying adequate attention to anything but the crooked curl of Dean’s mouth visible out of the corner of his eye.

Dean keeps his hand at Castiel’s knee until they’re called to board.

 

“So,” Castiel says, fighting laughter, “you _wouldn’t_ like to go on a tour of the volcano?”

“Dude.” Dean groans. Another occupant of their Filipino tour bus looks dubiously in their general direction. “You tellin’ me you haven’t seen _Dante’s Peak_?”

“Technically,” Castiel says, “no. I haven’t seen many movies at all. Although,” he adds, “I have seen _Men in Black_ four times. They play it on late-night television quite frequently.”

“Well, that’s a damn classic.”

“I do know the plot of _Dante’s Peak_.” Castiel presses his shoulder to Dean’s. “I was kidding.”

Dean’s face contorts, his lip curling. “Your sense of humor is weird. And this bus is gross.”

“No grosser than most of the gas stations you use in the United States.”

Petulant, Dean sinks further down in his seat, shoulders hunched. “It’s hot. I’d take stupid Siberia over this.”

Torn between amusement and irritation, Castiel slides down along the vinyl seat cover so that his face is level with Dean’s. He kisses Dean’s temple, tasting sweat. “It is hot,” he says, “and you’re tired. So am I.”

“Yeah, no shit.” But Dean relents a little bit, dragging the heel of his palm over his face and settling some of his weight against Castiel’s side. It’s a reassurance Castiel hadn’t known he needed. “Any luck, we’ll finally catch that son of a bitch. Pisses me off he’s using your grace to, what, do the church equivalent of drawing dicks in Sharpie on gas station bathroom walls. I don’t even _like_ churches and that shit seems sacrilegious to me.”

Ninoy Aquino International Airport had been loud and busy, depositing them into crowds of Filipino travelers with hardly a by-your-leave. They had stood out badly, not even Castiel’s fluent Tagalog mitigating the suspicious looks thrown their way, and the necessity of spending half the night in the airport until they could purchase tickets for the tour bus had not improved Dean’s rapidly souring mood. He’d scratched at the Mark through the layers of his clothing, the motion absent but unrelenting, until Castiel had resorted to swatting at his hand and saying _Dean, please, don’t._

They’re bound for Taal, a municipality in Batangas, under the fiction that they’re tourists hopping aboard a guided tour to the Taal Volcano. Dozens of languages float around the interior of the bus; Castiel might take the opportunity to stretch his legs, linguistically speaking, if Dean didn’t look so miserable.

“It pisses me off too.” He turns so his forehead’s to the side of Dean’s face, mouth skirting his jaw. “Is the Mark starting to affect you again?”

Dean laughs shortly. “What, ’cause I’m steamed about Meta-douche? I don’t think so. I dunno. Feels normal, whatever normal is. I kinda lost track of my own baseline a while ago. Just trying to make it through without killing anyone who doesn’t deserve it.”

“I think I know how that feels. Losing track of your baseline.”

“Oh, yeah? Humanity getting you down?”

“I honestly don’t know.” Out the window, the sky is bright, clear blue. They could almost be back home in Kansas. “The things I believed in for most of my existence are gone or proven untrustworthy. It’s been a long, full few years—but it’s also been hardly a blip considering how old I am.”

“Ancient,” Dean drawls.

“Very,” Castiel says.

“Well, hey.” Dean’s gaze darts toward Castiel and then away again. “It ain’t much, but you got me. Whatever that’s worth.”

Quiet, far past caring who sees and what they think, Castiel takes Dean’s hand. He laces their fingers together and waits until Dean relaxes into his hold. “I’m afraid,” he says, “and there are thousands of things that I miss. But right now, I’m not regretful.”

The bus hits a pothole, jarring all the passengers and knocking Dean’s jaw into Castiel’s collarbone. They laugh and hunker down for the rest of the ride.

 

Before the bus turns north, it stops for fuel and provisions in the town of Taal, not to be confused with the lake, the island, or the volcano. It’s warm out, a little humid, and Dean shrugs out of his button-down shirt. The sight of him in only a T-shirt is so unusual that it feels strangely illicit—Castiel wants to touch the places where the fabric clings to the softness of his stomach and the muscles of his arms.

Castiel has to store his leather jacket in their luggage, and he finds that he regrets it. It’s much too hot for it, but he’s already used to its weight and warmth, the way it evokes Dean’s affection even when Dean isn’t touching him.

“This sucks,” Dean tells him.

Castiel shrugs. “It will suck less if we can catch Metatron in the act, don’t you think?”

“Put up or shut up,” Dean says, “and start walking.”

Naturally, it’s Dean’s turn to be right. They slip out of the tour group, sweat already collecting under Castiel’s arms and trickling down the back of his neck, and begin their trek west. It’s not far, but soon Castiel understands Dean’s complaints: it’s hot in an insidious way, the moisture in the air pressing in around them as if it’s a third living creature unhappy with their presence.

After five minutes, Castiel peels his shirt off. He does it thoughtlessly, craving even the smallest stirrings of a breeze against his bare skin, and stashes it away in his backpack before he hoists it back over his shoulder.

Within seconds, though, there’s a different sort of heat walking its curious way down his spine. Castiel shivers despite the warmth in the air, shakes it off, and then shivers again.

“Dean,” he says. He meant it as a warning, but the tone dips beyond steely into something rougher, rawer.

Dean, his hands deep in the pockets of his jeans, raises his eyebrows and widens his eyes. “Oh, heya, Cas.” His T-shirt is damp with sweat, sticking to his back and making every shift and slide of his shoulder blades too, too visible. His nipples, too, and a low ache of desire, shockingly physical, unfurls itself through all the planes of Castiel’s consciousness.

They’ve kissed, ground up against each other with desperation and lust, and still Castiel wants Dean so badly it defies reason. The dark, sweaty spikes of hair at the back of his head, the curve of his spine and the way it echoes the first crest of the first wave that ever crashed against an idyllic shore.

“How are you doing this to me?”

Genuine surprise flicks across Dean’s expression. “What? You okay, buddy?”

“How are you—just _looking_ at me like that and I—”

Dean laughs. His head tips back as he does it. It doesn’t help the thickening in Castiel’s groin. “Dude, you have noticed you’re hotter than a house on fire, right? I’m tired and every time my arm itches I think I’m gonna go under and it’s grosser than Satan’s ballsack out here, and you’re basically a free show.”

The idea, Dean desiring him, isn’t exactly novel. It’s not like he hadn’t known. It’s just so fresh as part of Castiel’s lexicon. Jimmy’s body is comfortable in many ways, as familiar as a well-loved jacket, but he imagines he’ll need many more days before it comes to feel like _his_. Before he remembers without prompting that he inhabits something fleshly and physical, something that Dean can observe with appreciation and desire.

Castiel licks his lips and reaches into his jeans to readjust his half-erection where it’s pressed to the seam. “This is ridiculous,” he says, caught between irritation and a strange enjoyment of his own frustration.

“Oh, yeah.” Dean laughs again, but his eyes are hard, intent as he watches. “Yeah, being into someone like this is pretty weird. Been a long time since I got this stupid over someone else, y’know.”

“Stupid,” Castiel echoes.

“And ridiculous, yep.” Dean heaves the bag he’s carrying from one shoulder to the other, the movement tugging his T-shirt up over his hip for exactly long enough to distract Castiel. “Fun, though, huh?”

“Yeah.” They’re coming closer to the heart of Taal, its broad roads and looming white buildings. The cathedral rises up over tight clusters of trees. “Yeah, I think I like it.”

Dean tilts his chin toward the basilica, the line of his jaw clean and tempting against the matte blue of the sky. “Well, then, we better haul ass.” He pauses, grins. “Y’know, so we can have time to _get_ ass.”

“ _Honestly_ ,” Castiel starts, but Dean is picking up the pace, his focus narrowed to their mission, and Castiel can hardly blame him. He can’t think of Metatron for long or his fingers start to tingle with the repression of his anger.

It’s a beautiful building, the majesty of its façade intact under centuries of wear and tear. Small arches decorate the parking lot and groups of hushed visitors circle around the water feature that interrupts the path indoors and up to the nave proper.

When they make their way inside, Dean whistles. The sound bounces back to them from the choir, and a few heads turn. People, some with their hands folded and heads bowed and some talking with their voices down, occupy the pews in small groups.

“I kinda need you to take the lead,” Dean says between gritted teeth.

For lack of a better option, Castiel does. Belatedly, he wriggles his way back into his shirt, runs both hands through his hair in a half-hearted effort to look professional and appropriate. Dean hides a laugh behind his hand.

“Excuse me,” Castiel says, the Tagalog coming easily enough once he jogs his memory into gear. He steps toward the nearest knot of people, noting the furrows to their brows and the low intensity of their conversation.

A middle-aged woman glances up, dark eyebrows quirking in mistrustful parentheses. “Yes?”

“Are you—is there something happening here? An event, or…?”

“He’s supposed to come back today,” another local cuts in, a serious-looking younger man. “He said he has something to tell us.”

A cold feeling takes hold in Castiel’s stomach. “And who is _he_?”

“The white man who can work miracles.” A third onlooker, eager to share her knowledge. “I saw him last night. It was late—there weren’t many of us. He turned water into wine, just like that. Like something out of the Bible.”

It’s a surprising effort not to swear under his breath. “And he’s coming back. To… perform more miracles?”

“Supposedly.” The first woman has a more suspicious air; Castiel turns his focus to her, appreciating the steeliness of her expression. “To convey his message to us, I take it. Whatever it is.”

Castiel swallows, the taste of his own mouth abruptly bitter. “Thank you for letting me know.”

“People are gathering,” the boy says, pushing his glasses up his nose with his forefinger. “You should get ready.”

“I will,” Castiel says. He’s sincere about that, at least. Vaguely, he’s aware that his heart rate has increased, that blood is rushing in his ears. “ _Salamat_ again.”

Dean cocks his head from a few feet away, his focus traveling up from Castiel’s mouth back to his eyes. “You look like you just—uh. I dunno what would freak you out that much, but you look pretty freaked out.”

Peeling away from the knot of believers, Castiel forces a deep breath into his lungs. He places a hand at Dean’s elbow for the illusion of support. “I think Metatron has been here. And I think he’s coming back—soon.”

“Hey.” Dean’s eyes widen. “That’s good. That means we can catch him.”

“Right.” Castiel shakes his head a little, wondering at the lingering buzzing in his ears.

“Hey,” Dean says again. He looms large in Castiel’s vision suddenly, knocking their foreheads together, his breath musty and coffee-tinged. They both smell of sweat; Dean’s is clean, human, and Castiel wonders whether he could get away with licking the side of Dean’s neck to taste it. He’s searching for distractions and he knows it. “We’re gonna kick his ass. _You’re_ gonna kick his ass and I’m gonna clean up after you. Don’t sweat it.”

“It’s a little too hot out for that,” Castiel says dryly.

Dean huffs out a laugh and kisses Castiel’s forehead. The gesture comes so easily, thoughtlessly; Castiel’s heart does a ridiculous little pitter-pat. It does its part to calm him, to remind him that Metatron is graceless and, more importantly, that Metatron never had been a skilled warrior, even during Heaven’s glory days.

“So, what? What’s the deal?”

Castiel scowls, glancing toward the pews again. “He’s presenting himself as some sort of—I’m not sure. Messiah, maybe. Miracle worker, certainly. Some of them have already bought in, but others are just curious. He turned water into wine.”

“Gee.” Dean arches an eyebrow. “Least he’s sticking with the classics. I guess we wait around?”

The air in the basilica is cooler than the air outside, at least, and the sweat pooling at the small of Castiel’s back is starting to dry. Dean’s cheeks are rosy, his eyes bright.

“I guess so,” Castiel says, heaving a sigh. “If we’re lucky, it won’t be long before—”

Skeptical humans, Castiel has noticed, like to speculate that God has a sense of humor. Castiel, meanwhile, knows for a certainty that his father likes to play little jokes. He’s not so surprised as he might have been, then, when Metatron’s arrival steals the rest of the sentence from his mouth.

He strolls in like a human, hands clasped behind his back and a smile on his face. Fury rises in Castiel so quickly that it frightens him, the flames stoking high and burning hot in his gut.

There’s a bone-deep gratification in the look of apparently genuine shock that crosses Metatron’s features when Castiel steps forward, Dean a half-step behind him.

“ _You_ ,” Castiel hisses.

Metatron spreads his hands and rocks back on his heels. “Me,” he says.

How Castiel misses his wings. He wants to spread them, to make all his anger so clear that everyone in the building sees and feels it.

Dean touches his elbow, murmurs some sort of warning in his ear. Castiel doesn’t catch the words, but he does catch the intent behind them.

“Coming here was a mistake,” Castiel says.

“For you?” Metatron chuckles and switches easily to Tagalog as he nods and smiles at one of the worshipers. “Yes, hello.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.” Castiel sticks with English.

“Aw, but you find it so charming.”

“Quit it,” Dean growls, “and let Cas beat the shit out of you. Leave these people alone.”

“What a good little white savior you are!” Metatron grins.

Castiel rolls his eyes. He misses the comfort of the jacket Dean purchased, but the air is too thick and stifling as it is. “Pot,” he says, “meet kettle. Unless you hadn’t noticed that you’re just as trapped in your vessel as I am in mine?”

“Oh, I don’t think that our situations are entirely equivalent.” Oozing smugness, Metatron pulls something from the neck of his shirt. It glows faintly, and the bottom drops out of Castiel’s stomach.

“You son of a bitch.”

“Now, Dean,” Metatron says, “that’s not a nice thing to say about our creator. Castiel’s grace is looking lovely, isn’t it? I guess I should thank you for the donation, Cas.”

Castiel takes an abortive half-step closer, his hands curling into fists at his sides. “You _lied_ to—”

“We’ve been _over_ this. Now, speaking of your donation, I believe it’s about to prove helpful.” Smiling, Metatron tucks the vial of grace back into his shirt. He snaps his fingers, his edges blur, and he disappears.

Whispers and gasps rise from the small crowd, the people drawing in closer to one another, comparing notes about what they’ve witnessed.

“What the fuck,” Dean says.

“ _Dammit._ ” The strength of his conviction leaves Castiel in a rush, and his knees buckle. He sinks to the floor, his chest tight.

“Whoa, whoa.” Dean’s there in an instant, arms around Castiel’s middle. Ever present, solid as always. Castiel shuts his eyes and leans against him. “Dude, what the hell just happened?”

“He’s—fuck.”

Dean laughs, the sound startling but melodious in Castiel’s ear. “No way, dude, I doubt it. Guy’s ugly as sin.”

Castiel laughs in turn, weakly. “He’s using my grace. I knew that, but seeing it… I’m sorry. This is pathetic.” He’s an angel of the Lord and he’s reduced to this debilitating nausea.

“Nah.” Dean’s cheek is warm against the back of Castiel’s neck. “He’s a piece of shit. Kind of makes me wanna blow chunks, too. Hey, breathe, okay?” He’s pitching his voice so slow, so even, that Castiel can’t help but obey. Dean is good at exuding a kind of forceful calm. “How much power can he really get without taking it out of that thing he’s keeping it in?”

“I’m not sure. Honestly, I wasn’t sure it still existed at all.”

“So this is basically good news.” Dean noses at Castiel’s collar, lips ghosting against the rise of his shoulder blade. “We know he can’t go that far at once. Maybe he’ll come back. We’re gonna figure it out, okay?”

Against his better judgment, Castiel believes Dean. As always.

 

With Sam and Charlie asleep across the world and without leads, they hole up in a hotel on the outskirts of Taal. Castiel leaves his cell phone number with a handful of their new acquaintances at the basilica, but he’s hardly hopeful. Metatron, unfortunately, is not stupid.

Wrung out and shaky, Castiel sprawls across the thin comforter and tries to be thankful for small favors: Dean had put up no pretense of asking for two beds, only winked at Castiel as he asked for one room, one king-sized bed.

A cloud of steam precedes Dean, fresh from the shower, out of the bathroom. Castiel sits up, drawn back to alertness by the pinkness of Dean’s skin, the sheer vast expanse of it bare and tangible in front of him. The Mark has gone redder than before, but it barely pings on the radar of Castiel’s attention. Dean is wearing nothing but a thin towel slung around his hips. He smiles at Castiel, tentative.

Ridiculously, Dean’s shyness makes Castiel bolder. He slides to the edge of the bed, plants his feet on the rug, and lifts his chin. “Hello, Dean.”

Dean’s laugh floods the remaining space between them with warmth. He steps closer, then closer still, until Castiel could lean forward and kiss the small swell of his belly, if he wanted. “I’m not tryin’ to—I know you just freaked out pretty bad. I don’t wanna do anything if you’re not…” He shrugs, one shoulder lifting and his mouth tilting in a self-deprecating smile.

“Dean,” Castiel says. He tugs at the loose knot holding Dean’s towel in place. It slithers to the floor, and Dean is naked for him.

“Uh, yeah.” Dean’s voice drops, comes from deeper in his throat. “Cas? Penny for your thoughts?”

Castiel chews on his lower lip. He touches the slight, hollow curve of Dean’s hip, his fingers tracing along to where the golden hairs of his body darken around his cock, which is starting to thicken under the heat of Castiel’s gaze. “I’m having trouble,” he says, “deciding where to start. You’re—”

Before he can settle on the right adjective, Dean’s stooping down, his hands cupping Castiel’s face. “I got an idea,” he says, and ah—of course—Castiel _knew_ he had forgotten something. There’s Dean, though, his mouth open and wet, kissing Castiel and stroking his hair and kissing him again, harder, deeper.

Castiel keeps up as best he can. Dean’s thighs are lovely handles, solid and still shower-damp and flexing under Castiel’s palms as he leans up, their tongues moving slick together. It’s inexplicable, how this inelegant glide and press of mouths should make his blood pump so hard, should make all his nerve endings tingle and send arousal pooling feverish in the core of him, where his grace used to make its presence known. Dean’s fingernails press crescent moons into the skin of Castiel’s neck, and he urges Castiel’s chin up a fraction more, angles his head differently—and it’s abruptly a new kind of kiss, faster, dirtier.

“ _Dean_ ,” he says again. The name emerges on the heels of a gasp; the moan that follows nearly consumes it. Castiel shudders, slides his hands up Dean’s sides just to touch every inch of skin that he can. “Dean.”

“Uh-huh.” Dean breathes against the corner of Castiel’s mouth. “You okay?”

“Yes. _Yes._ ” Nearly giddy, Castiel takes hold of Dean’s hips and tugs until Dean is spilling into his lap, long limbs, erection pressed to the crease of Castiel’s jeans between hip and thigh. “I want you closer,” he explains.

Dean is laughing again, dropping messy kisses to Castiel’s face. Temple, cheek, jaw, chin. “Well, congrats.”

“It’s good,” Castiel says. And it is: the smooth skin at the cleft of Dean’s ass makes a perfect space for Castiel’s fingertips to rest, for him to grab hold of Dean and pull him closer still and watch, reverent, the way his eyes roll back in his head as his cock drags against Castiel’s jeans and he makes a muffled whining noise.

“Whoa.” Dean sounds dazed. His hips shudder and twitch, his toes curling in the air behind them. He’s hard, his cock hanging heavy, curving up toward his stomach. “Jesus, Cas.”

They have, Castiel reminds himself, the entire night. Time passes strangely in human perception, but now he’s grateful for how it stretches open and potent before them. Trying to school himself in patience, he pulls Dean into one more kiss, swallowing the gasping little whimpers as Dean grinds down against him. They’re beautiful, but the taste of Dean’s mouth is better, the scrape of teeth against his lip, the rasp of stubble.

With time, their kisses ease. No less desperate, Castiel thinks, but longer, an acknowledgment that they need to luxuriate in this closeness while it’s still available to them. If Dean’s body is formed in the shape of a wave, then he moves like the surf, steady and even and inexorable as he rocks against Castiel, groaning into the openness of their mouths.

 _I love you_ , Castiel thinks but doesn’t say. There’s a delicacy to what’s between them, fragility necessitated by the Mark, still harsh crimson on Dean’s arm and by the goal of their mission. Castiel barely expects to make it out of an encounter with Metatron alive, after all.

Castiel loses track of the kisses; that speaks, more than anything else, to his humanity. He can, and does, drown in this moment. In his half-formed longings, he had forgotten to conflate the two things he wanted most: to touch Dean, and for Dean to touch him. They are, it turns out, far from separate. Dean is alive, beating heart and firing synapses and capable hands that pull Castiel onto the bed with him, that muss his hair and tug at his T-shirt and demand more, more skin, more deep and indulgent kisses, _more_.

“Oh,” Castiel breathes, flat on his back and dazed. Dean grins down at him and does it again, working his hand into Castiel’s unzipped jeans to cup the straining outline of his cock through his boxers. “Fuck.”

“Dirty mouth,” Dean says brightly.

“Fuck,” Castiel manages again, ready confirmation of Dean’s accusation, as Dean pets at his balls, fingers just brushing bare skin through his fly. “That feels wonderful.”

Dean smiles, keeps smiling as he works Castiel out of his jeans and underwear. He’s good at it in a casual human way, yanking Castiel’s socks off, throwing the rest of his clothes to the floor until there’s only the two of them, Castiel and Dean Winchester, naked and touching.

There are what feel like dozens of points of contact. Dean’s ankle knocking against Castiel’s shin, their knees brushing, bare thighs, hands at Castiel’s hips and cupping the halves of his ribcage and working cleverly at his nipples until they’re hard and oversensitive. He whines and squirms his way closer, wedging his thigh between Dean’s legs and reaching until all of Dean is pressed to all of him.

“You good?” Dean, mouth to Castiel’s ear. The hotel’s air conditioner rattles lightly in the background, reminding Castiel how far they are from home. If home is a place rather than a person; he’s unsure, undecided.

“I don’t know if I’m good,” Castiel says honestly. “I try. But this—I’m sure that this is good.”

Dean nips at Castiel’s earlobe. “Okay, so we’re two not-so-good guys doing something good.”

Tempted to argue, to insist on an impassioned defense of Dean’s goodness, Castiel shifts against Dean instead and moans. Dean’s erection slides all velvet and fire against his own, and the touch makes Dean gasp in turn, sucking and biting at the skin around Castiel’s nipple. His teeth catch and Castiel hears himself make a shaky noise, sees himself grabbing hold of Dean and rocking into him with purpose so that Dean will rub his stubbly cheek against Castiel’s chest and kiss right above his heart, open-mouthed.

Dean looks at him with wide eyes and a sardonic quirk to his mouth. “So.” He reaches between them. His hand fits easily around them both and Castiel shivers, his breath hitching. “What’cha want? This is your cheer-up sex, after all.”

The slow movements of Dean’s hand don’t stop feeling incredible on the surface, but the goodness of it drops away and Castiel’s eyes open. He frowns, touching Dean’s wrist to ask him to stop. “It’s not mine,” he says, startled by the rasp in his own voice. “I mean, that’s not—”

Dutiful, Dean stops. He licks his lips. “Cas?”

“I, ah.” Castiel clears his throat and tries to do the same with his mind. It’s no small feat when he’s faced with Dean’s red mouth and the golden ends of Dean’s eyelashes, the color of wheat. “I want this—whatever this is. Whatever happens. If Metatron appears and kills us both in our sleep—”

“Get to the point, Cas,” Dean says with a strained laugh. “That ain’t sexy.”

“This is ours,” Castiel growls, kissing Dean hard and quick to prove his point, holding Dean’s stuttering breath in his lungs for one greedy moment. “It’s not mine and it’s not yours. It’s _ours_. Okay? Please.”

“Okay.” Dean’s grip tightens where he still has a hold on both their cocks, and Castiel nearly wheezes with the rush of purely physical pleasure. “Yeah.” His smile creeps back into view, crooked. “But I wanna give you what you want. That’s what _I_ want.”

“I want.” That feels like enough—it’s true, certainly. Castiel angles his hips just so, into Dean’s hand, and Dean’s flush darkens, his mouth falling slack. But Dean’s waiting for the rest, so Castiel goes on: “I want you to show me exactly what you like. How to make you feel good.”

Dean’s expression goes dark and secretive. For a disorienting second, Castiel fears he’s made a mistake—the Mark may be halted in its march against Dean’s soul, but the progress it’s made is already in place, and Dean is harsher, angrier, than the man he used to be.

Then Dean grins with bright eyes and moves, spreading himself over Castiel with thighs pinning his hips and hands in his hair. Dean’s kisses go deep and wet and messy and Castiel moans into every one and Dean keeps touching him, hands roaming hungrily over what must be every inch of sensitive human skin. Dean is insatiable, and Castiel spares a moment for regret that he will never know the way Dean kissed before he took on the Mark of Cain. Now, though, Dean kisses like he wants to consume him.

Castiel is happy to be consumed.

Dean bears him down into the mattress, rocking and arching just so, so that Castiel’s veins are alight and all he can think is _Dean, Dean, Dean_ , and then he’s saying it aloud, _oh, Dean_ and _touch me more, right there, yes_ as Dean fingers at the leaking slit of his erection, callused thumb sparking heat like a brushfire in his body.

“Your dick is really,” Dean starts, and clears his throat. The old Dean, the real Dean, is there in the shy laugh that spills from his mouth. “Your dick is fucking gorgeous. Can I—mind if I put it in me?”

The image alone makes Castiel’s balls tighten. “Please,” he says.

Dean knows what to do. He retrieves lubrication from his luggage, filling the silence with a half-laughed story about how he had struggled with whether he should bring this, afraid he would jinx his chances with wishful thinking. It’s absurd and human and charming. It doesn’t defuse the breathless tension clutching at Castiel’s lungs and heart.

While Castiel is struggling to catch his breath, Dean is sprawling back on the sheets and stroking three broad fingertips between his own legs.

“Dean, wait.”

Dean looks up, his teeth digging into his lower lip and the barest tip of his middle finger pressed inside himself. It’s obscene. It’s beautiful. A whining noise rises from the back of Castiel’s throat.

“Yeah,” Dean prompts, pushing that finger in to the first knuckle. A muscle in his jaw jumps and his head tips a little to one side, his gaze fixed on Castiel.

“Ah, just.” Castiel crawls closer. He’s fascinated, watching the slow stretch of Dean’s body opening, preparing for him. “Let me?”

“Yeah,” Dean says again, a hoarse breath of a word. He reaches for Castiel’s wrist and pulls his hand in. It’s easy from there, Dean’s hole already slick for him. Easy to slip his finger in alongside Dean’s, to choke back a whimper at the tight, clinging heat that’s waiting for him.

“Fuck.”

“Sure hope so.”

Dean has, Castiel knows, some experience with men. Not as much as he would like, or at least he hadn’t had as much as he would have liked when Castiel first pulled him from the pit and absorbed the knowledge of his soul and his yearnings. More likely, then, the ease with which he fingers himself is a result of just this—of taking his own fingers, by himself at night or in the shower. Arousal burns bright at the base of Castiel’s spine as he watches and helps. Dean’s eyelashes flutter like the wings of a butterfly each time they press deeper, and when Castiel works in a third finger, the second of his own.

And then there’s Dean, sinuous and sure, pushing Castiel flat on his back again. Swinging his leg over Castiel and letting just the silky weight of his balls slide against Castiel’s cock until Castiel’s fingers are twitching and curling into the scratchy comforter beneath them.

“Dean,” Castiel says.

“God,” Dean answers, “you’re gorgeous.” The words seem to tear out of him, too earnest.

“I want,” Castiel says for the second time, but this time he has the rest of the sentence in the wings: “I want inside you. Now.”

“Ask,” Dean says with a flash of a grin, “and ye shall receive.” As simple as that, fresh sweat gleaming at his suprasternal notch, he guides Castiel to him and eases himself down, stretched slow and tight around him. He’s shaking, but only a little.

Castiel’s heart hammers in his chest, so hard he’s sure it will break loose. Dean feels—it’s beyond words and beyond comprehension, the perfect pressure and all of it everywhere, Dean’s hand cupping his jaw, the shifting angle as Dean leans down, careful, to kiss him.

Desperate, Castiel kisses back with too many teeth, his tongue too eager to lick its way into Dean’s ready mouth. Dean takes it, moans low and irresistible, sucking on Castiel’s tongue and stroking sweaty locks of hair back from Castiel’s face. How, he wonders, do people survive this on a regular basis?

“Can I,” Dean starts.

Castiel speaks at the same time, one last plea. “Dean, I need—”

Whatever they need, it must be the same thing. Dean is fiercely beautiful, his cock red where it’s straining up toward his belly, and he digs his toes into the mattress and moves with abandon. His palms brace against Castiel’s chest, his mouth drops open, and with the first time he shifts up and then slides back down to take Castiel all the way inside himself again, Castiel is sure he’s going to die of a heart attack and that he’s going to like it.

He clutches at Dean’s thighs, at the tectonic plates of his muscles as they shift. Dean doesn’t slow or stop, but he drops a hand over Castiel’s, tangles their fingers up and squeezes tight. It gives Castiel the courage to move with him, small thrusts up that are blissfully worth it for the first time he strikes the right angle and Dean’s rhythm falters, his back arching and a whimper punching out of his open mouth.

Orgasm sneaks up on him, claws of heightened arousal digging in all along the sides of Castiel’s spine. They tighten each time Dean rocks back down, squeezed taut and molten where Castiel moves inside him.

“Dean.” He’s said the name too many times, but he’s always loved the way it rolls off his tongue, so he says it once more: “Dean. Touch yourself.”

Dean makes a sound like a sob and obeys, curling his fist tight around the slick head of his cock. It makes him shudder and clench tighter still around Castiel, who presses his cheek to the bedspread and thinks a string of creative and impolite words in Enochian to stave off—

And there it is, as Dean strokes himself with rough and frantic twists of his wrist. Castiel throws his head back and comes, bright spangles of pleasure coiling and snapping in all his limbs.

“Ah,” Dean gasps. “Fuck. Oh, fuck, _Castiel._ ” He says the name the way he did in Purgatory, as a prayer, as an expression of hope and faith and fear all at once, but this time Castiel is here with him, so close they can taste each other’s breath. And then he says it again, but he makes it only as far as _Cas_ before he comes into his hand, onto his own stomach and Castiel’s too.

After, the room takes on the indistinct smudginess of an Impressionist painting. Castiel always liked those—they made the most sense from far away, after all, and he was eternally watching from an insurmountable distance. This is the up-close of it, though, Dean’s mouth smeared hot and affectionate against his own. Sticky warmth, Dean murmuring into Castiel’s chin how he’d done so well, how he had felt so good and perfect in him.

Feeling hazy and indistinct, as if the edges of this body aren’t adequate to contain the swelling of his heart, Castiel rolls onto his side and pulls Dean against him. Dean goes, smile tucked under Castiel’s chin. They don’t sleep, exactly—it’s not late enough, and they’re meant to wait until it’s morning in the United States—but they doze, messy and sated, as the sun drops in the sky and paints Dean’s shoulder blades with pools of pastel that would have made Monet envious.

 

In Castiel’s half-sketched dream, he finally recognizes her. Her glinting eyes and the mocking curl of her smile. The way she tosses her hair over her shoulder and the shadow of more arms, more hands, dripping with golden bangles, flashing in and out of sight behind her.

“You’re barking up the wrong tree,” she tells him.

“This does,” he says, “feel pointless.”

Not quite asleep, he can feel Dean stirring against him. The twitching of his fingers, the tickle of his breath.

“It is.” She laughs. “You know I’ve been waiting for you to figure this out for days.”

“I’m _trying_.”

“You have it with you,” she offers, dark slashes of eyebrows lifting toward her hairline. “That’s no inspirational platitude, by the way. I’m being literal.”

Dean grunts. His thigh bangs against Castiel’s kneecap. And the dream, what there was of it, is over, Dean blinking muzzily up at him and touching his fingertips to Castiel’s mouth. They taste like come and lotion and sweat.

It’s gone. Not the memory, but the knowledge, so damnably obvious in his mind, of the woman who had been talking to him. It’s an itch deep in his consciousness that Castiel can’t seem to scratch.

“Earth to Cas.” Dean flicks a lock of hair back from Castiel’s temple. The lingering shreds of recognition pass, and he’d like to be annoyed, but there’s Dean, and instead he can’t help but smile.

They shower together. Dean insists that he needs to rinse off and that sharing the stall will conserve water. It’s small and awkward and cramped; their elbows keep bumping as Castiel reaches for the shampoo while Dean reaches to sluice fresh water over his face or into his hair. Dean laughs every time and the sound echoes warmly around the bathroom. Droplets of water cling to Dean’s nose and eyelashes and Castiel battles the temptation to kiss him afresh, knowing he would be irreparably distracted by holding Dean against the cold tiles and sinking to his knees to taste him. They would miss their appointment to talk with Sam and Charlie. He nearly does it anyway.

Charlie dominates the narrow view afforded by the webcam this time. “So, uh.” She pulls an elastic face that reminds Castiel of Dean. He can understand why the two of them get along so well. “He basically just showed up to evil villain monologue at you and then, what, Disapparated dramatically?”

“Using,” Castiel adds flatly, “my grace. But yes, essentially.”

Sam’s tucked into the corner of the screen, his mouth set in an unhappy downward turn. “What’s the point of all this? Just dicking around?”

“Power trip,” Dean suggests.

“Yes,” Castiel says, “actually. I think. He failed to achieve power in Heaven—thankfully. He’s operating without the power that was his birthright as an angel.”

“This is the stupidest power trip ever,” Charlie says.

“Yeah, well.” Dean leans back from where he’s cross-legged on the bed. Unthinking, Castiel steadies him with a hand at the back of his neck and then leaves it there, thumb stroking the fine hairs that arrow down toward his spine. “He’s gotta be one of the stupidest baddies we’ve ever tried to gank, so…”

“Look.” Charlie grimaces. “I didn’t want to miss our date, but the thing is—I kinda got nothin’. You’re so far east you’re practically west. There aren’t really any cathedrals left unless you go back toward Europe.”

“Retracing our footsteps,” Castiel says.

Dean groans and tilts his head into the cradle of Castiel’s palm. “Fuck that. Can’t we ask—what’s his face, tall, dark, and handsome? Back in London?”

“The naga,” Castiel says.

“The wha—”

“Ah.” Castiel actually feels a small spike of embarrassment. “I meant to tell you. Daniel’s husband. Not human, which he was kind enough to tell us. Naga, which I figured out shortly after we met him.”

“A giant _snake_? Gee, he looks good for his species.” Dean scowls. “I guess that explains why he was so creepy.”

“He was very helpful, and that’s not a bad idea.” Castiel addresses Sam and Charlie again: “If I send you two some contact information, can you get ahold of Daniel Kang and his associate and ask if they can do some more comprehensive tracking work for us? They pointed us in the right direction the first time around. If you mention us, they might be willing to help.”

“Or not.” Dean’s unhappy. Most likely thanks to the discovery of the naga’s true species; whatever Dean had been picturing, it was likely something a bit closer to familiar. “They kind of gave me the creeps.”

“It’s worth a try.” Sam takes a swig of coffee from the mug he’s holding, small in his hands. “Maybe something’ll come to you guys if you sleep on it.”

“Yeah. Maybe.” Oddly but charmingly, Dean blushes as he looks over at Castiel. He rubs absently at the Mark under the fabric of his shirt.

Sleep is their intent, but it seems it’s time for Castiel to learn anew the lesson that sleep is flighty and strange, that it slips too easily through human hands. The room is a comfortable temperature, the bed is only slightly lumpy, and exhausting, once they hang up and close the laptop lid on Sam and Charlie, is tugging insistently at the edges of his consciousness.

Instead, he and Dean lie awake, hands loosely clasped between them, looking at each other.

Castiel likes, he decides, the particular curve of Dean’s top lip. The spot in the middle where it dips, the freckles that collect above it. He’s examining this, considering the merits of giving up on sleep and kissing Dean, when Dean taps the side of Castiel’s knuckle with his thumb and clears his throat.

“Mm?”

Dean ducks his head, chin toward his sternum as he does when he’s embarrassed. “That guy.”

A moment of blankness, and then Castiel understands. “The naga?”

“Yeah. Guess we never did get his name.”

“No.” Castiel runs his thumb along the knobs of Dean’s knuckles, the improbably smooth spaces between each one. “I meant to tell you what he was.”

Dean huffs a sound that isn’t exactly a laugh. He doesn’t sound angry. “You say that a lot sometimes, Cas.”

“I know.” There’s no defense for it, and so Castiel doesn’t try. He traces aimless shapes on the back of Dean’s hand. If the light was on, he’d connect the dots between Dean’s freckles. If he still had his grace, he wouldn’t need the light.

After a pause so long Castiel had begun to wonder if Dean had finally dropped off, Dean says, “It’s gotta be weird, huh?”

“You’ll need to be more specific,” Castiel says wryly.

“I mean, uh. For Daniel. They’re married, right? That part is real?”

“I don’t know anything for certain anymore,” Castiel says, “but—didn’t you see them looking at each other? Touching each other? I think so.”

“Yeah.” Dean’s voice goes soft. He licks his lips, the sound audible only because his face is barely inches from Castiel’s. “Yeah, I saw.”

They don’t speak again, but they don’t sleep, either. Dean touches Castiel’s face, skating the curves and angles of it with careful fingertips. He’s using his left hand, perhaps an attempt to keep the Mark as far from Castiel as possible. Castiel aches with the unfulfillable desire to show Dean his true face—his true _faces_. But this is all there is left, and when the pad of Dean’s thumb brushes the corner of Castiel’s eye, draws a path down the bridge of his nose, it feels for a moment like home.


	6. Japan

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some semi-NSFW art in the middle of this chapter, as a warning. (Look at it, though-- it's beautiful.)

“You’re sure.”

“Yes,” Castiel says for the fourth or fifth time, pretending to be absorbed in studying some detail of his ersatz passport.

“How sure?”

“ _Pretty_ sure.” The notebook seems like a palpable weight in the inside pocket of his jacket, though in reality it weighs almost nothing. The words aren’t there—Castiel’s not sure they had ever been there outside his dream—but they had been clear and specific. None of the tangled metaphors that typically accompany omens.

 _Tokyo_ , he had read, in big capital English letters that scrawled clear across one of the painstaking illustrations of Kartikeya. _He’s going there. Beat him to it._

It had been the best clue they had, nebulous though it was. Sam and Charlie wrote that they still had nothing and that they had heard nothing back yet from Daniel and his associates in London. Dean had been growing so obviously restless, sipping his morning coffee and scowling at the—beautiful, frankly—landscape of the Philippines as if it had personally wronged him. Castiel had worried about the spell, about whether that kind of cabin fever could knock it off-balance and set the Mark on the prowl for Dean’s soul all over again.

Tokyo, then. Their shortest flight yet, and Castiel suspects that Dean is getting used to air travel, though he’ll most likely never deign to admit it.

Narita International Airport had hustled them along, checking their passports and moving them through customs with staggering efficiency. They’re poised at the ticket counter for the bullet train, Dean’s knuckles white where he’s gripping the handle of the large suitcase.

“Okay,” he says. “I trust you.” A benediction, coming from Dean.

 

The bullet train delights Dean. He insists on the window seat, presses both hands against it and peers out through the glass with his face bright. “This is _awesome_ ,” he tells Castiel, kicking his feet against the back of the seat in front of him and ignoring the dissatisfied grunt from the salaryman who occupies it.

“It’s very fast,” Castiel agrees. Despite himself, he’s smiling. Dean’s enthusiasm is infectious, the very picture of the idiom _like a kid on Christmas morning_. He’s not wrong, either. It feels good, zipping past the thick forests of rural Japan, occasionally glimpsing pockets of farmland and strings of laundry left out to dry. The sheer unbridled speed is a balm to his soul, if a soul is what he has. It’s not like flying, but it satisfies a fraction of the lingering urge to spread his wings and take off.

Tokyo is huge. _Huge_ is an understatement, in fact, Castiel thinks as the train opens up and they spill out into Shibuya. They’re both tall by Japanese standards, not to mention the painful obviousness of their foreignness. They garner more than a handful of looks, but if Dean notices, he doesn’t let on. He laughs, craning his neck up at the buildings that tower over them.

“Well, shit. Manhattan ain’t got nothin’ on this.”

“The Tokyo metropolitan area houses more than thirty-seven million people,” Castiel agrees.

Dean whistles. The trick makes his lips purse interestingly. “You got anything more specific than _Tokyo_? ’cause I got the feeling it could take us a while to find one dude in all this.”

“No,” Castiel says, scowling. Dean’s right—this city is massive.

“Hey.” Dean curls his fingers around Castiel’s elbow. “Buck up. I bet Sam and Charlie’ll have something for us in the morning. I’ll buy you some, uh, sake in the meantime.”

 

“Isn’t that,” Dean says, mouthing at the ticklish spot right below Castiel’s navel, “kinda pointless? We were just in Paris.”

Castiel squirms. His head swims, a distant and pleasant sort of drunkenness. Dean had made good on his promise and treated them to a bottle of sake to cap off their experimental dinner of ramen and rice balls. It’s a cleaner intoxication than the kind the wine had given him, everything seeming lucid and obvious like his desire for every part of Dean. “Tokyo Tower is a tourist location here, too.”

“Yeah, that doesn’t really make me wanna go.” Grinning, Dean rubs his cheek against Castiel’s erection. Castiel gasps, his hips bucking. Dean’s mouth is gleaming in the light of their bedside lamp, leaving kisses on Castiel’s thighs, nipples, stomach, but refusing to land where his arousal aches at its heaviest.

“I meant—” Castiel cuts himself off with a whimper as Dean sucks a bruise into the crease of his thigh. The pain is just sharp enough to heighten the pleasure, another human contradiction. “I meant that Metatron has been drawing some attention to himself. Maybe—maybe the Tokyo Tower is the next best thing to a cathedral. It’s a site of worship, of sorts.”

Dean hums under his breath. “You’re way too freaking articulate. I’m not doin’ my job.”

“ _Dean._ ” Castiel whines. “It’s a site of importance in many of the animated Japanese TV shows you like. Is that incentive enough?”

“What are you—dude!” Apparently offended, Dean whips his head up to scowl at Castiel. His thumbs dig into the muscles just behind Castiel’s knees. “Who told you about that?”

“I know you, Dean.” Hopeful, Castiel stretches out further on the bed, offering himself. His cock is leaking a little, eager for the haven of Dean’s mouth.

Dean’s scowl softens. He glances down, and his tongue darts out to wet his lips. “Dammit, Cas,” he says without heat.

“So that’s a yes.” Feeling daring, Castiel arches his hips so that the head of his cock bumps Dean’s chin, brushes his lips. Dean’s eyes darken and he palms at himself through his boxers.

“Fine. Whatever. If I turn into a magical girl, promise you won’t tell Sam.”

“Mm.”

Determination glinting in his eyes and the curl of his smile, Dean descends. He’s blood-warm and relentless and any remaining traces of Castiel’s articulacy scatter to the four winds in the wake of his hands and mouth.

 

Tokyo Tower is, as Dean had irritably predicted, a tourist trap. They dodge attendants offering them tower-shaped foam hats with Castiel murmuring _sumimasen, sumimasen_ to each one, groups of stock-still American families staring upward like turkeys gathered in a rainstorm, and what seem like dozens of entrances to the same overpriced gift shop before they’re allowed to step into the elevator that will take them to the top.

“Christ on a damn crutch,” Dean says breathlessly when they step out onto the landing.

Nonsensical blasphemy aside, Dean’s right again. The sky glitters bright blue over what looks to the naked eye like an endless labyrinth of city punctuated by occasional, unpredictable growths of jewel-green forest that puff up like cotton balls from the surrounding skyscrapers.

Catching sight of Metatron here would be absurd. He’s meant to skulk around in alleyways and grungy diners, not mar this beauty.

This high up, the breeze is sharp and cold. Castiel zips his jacket higher up. The well-worn leather still feels a little like a caress from Dean, the physical reminder that Dean cares for him and that he’s willing to show it in his own way.

“So, what?” Dean elbows him, leaning in so his breath puffs shockingly warm against Castiel’s chilled nose and mouth. “What are we looking for?”

“Anything,” Castiel says. He squints at the horizon. The city doesn’t stop, only vanishes beyond the line of sight afforded even by this view. “Anything out of the ordinary.”

Dean makes a skeptical noise of assent and slides his hands into the pockets of Castiel’s jacket so they’re linked, nose to nose. Castiel smiles helplessly.

“Kinda makes me miss Kansas, y’know?”

“I know.” There’s something beautiful in every part of the world, but the undercurrent of _home_ that lives in Lebanon, Kansas, waiting for Castiel to claim it makes it the loveliest of all. “We’ve come so far we’re almost back where we started. It’s not that far away anymore.”

“Yeah.” Dean breathes for a moment, the smell of vending-machine coffee against Castiel’s lips. “Maybe you don’t have to get your own room in the bunker after all, huh?”

He makes the proposal so casually that the significance nearly slips past Castiel. But not quite. It’s a gift, an acknowledgment that something new has sprung up between them, and a small hope that they’ll both make it back to Kansas alive and together.

Castiel’s smile grows. He covers Dean’s hands with his own and rocks up on his heels to close the tiny gap between them with a kiss.

There are people milling around them, and they murmur to each other at the sight of two white men kissing, but Castiel doesn’t care. He cares about the way Dean’s mouth curves into a smile that presses to his own and about how Dean turns his hands to lace their fingers together in the warmth of Castiel’s pockets. He cares about the taste of toothpaste and café au lait from a can pushed into his mouth by the easy exploration of Dean’s tongue. He cares about doing whatever he needs to do to get the Mark off Dean’s arm and to preserve the unguarded, half-laughing noises of pleasure Dean had made last night as Castiel slackened his jaw and sank down over him.

“Well, isn’t this cliché.”

They spring apart, Castiel’s heart thumping so hard in his chest that he’s sure the sound carries throughout all the boroughs of Tokyo.

Metatron laughs and kicks his feet. He’s perched on the railing, which Castiel is sure was blocked off to the public moments before. “Really, you two? Kissing on top of Tokyo Tower? I thought you were pretending _not_ to be a weeaboo, Deano.”

“I got no idea what that means,” Dean growls, “but I’m gonna need you to give Cas his grace back and then take a long walk off a short pier, ASAP.”

“What,” Castiel says, gritting the words out with his jaw clenched, “the hell do you want? You’re not _doing_ anything with it—”

“Aww.” Metatron arranges his face into a pout. “This is something!” He makes a sweeping gesture, and it’s only then that Castiel notices: all the other figures around them are frozen. Time’s still going, he thinks, because there are distant traffic noises from below the Tower, but all the other tourists up at the top are still, eerily so.

“Something worthwhile,” Castiel corrects himself.

“Judgy, judgy.”

Dean steps closer, his shoulder brushing Castiel’s. “You’re just a guy right now, right? Give it.” He produces the gun that’s tucked inside his jacket, holding it more levelly than Castiel could manage at a time like this. Years of practice. “Or I shoot.”

Metatron raises his eyebrows and tugs the chain holding Castiel’s grace over his neck. “And I drop this. Do you think it’ll survive the fall?”

Bitterness rises in Castiel’s chest and throat so quickly that he nearly chokes on it. For the first time, the expression _seeing red_ makes perfect sense to him. “Don’t.”

“What, and you did something so important with it? Killing your siblings, sacrificing your principles in the name of this snot-nosed, ungrateful mud monkey?”

“Hey,” Dean’s saying, but his voice drops into the background. Castiel’s fingers twitch, then curl into fists. It may be that he’s human, without his powers and without superhuman strength, but he knows with unassailable conviction that Metatron is weak. That his own core, whatever it is that makes him Castiel, grace or no grace, is stronger.

It lends him courage.

Castiel lunges.

Metatron flails, nearly pitches them both backwards and over the railing, down to the hard pavement of Tokyo. His spine steely with resolve, Castiel gets his hands fisted in Metatron’s grubby shirt and pulls, hard.

They both fall, but Castiel’s ready for it. He rolls, pins Metatron to the pavement. The vial of his grace rolls out of the field of Castiel’s peripheral vision; he’ll have to trust Dean not to let it out of sight.

“Cas, please—”

“Don’t _call_ me that.” Castiel uses his hold on Metatron’s shirt to lift him up, slam his skull back against the ground. The resulting crack is sickening—and satisfying.

Metatron gurgles. Blood trickles from his nose.

Castiel wills his awareness of Metatron’s vulnerability away. He’s just as vulnerable. _Dean_ was nearly as vulnerable when Metatron killed him, and the Mark was the only thing that saved him. If it could be called _saving_.

A shadow falls over them. Castiel starts, but it’s only Dean, handing him—

The gun. It fits easily in his hand.

“Hey,” Metatron says weakly. “Can’t we work something out?”

“You’ve had your chances.”

“He’s not wrong,” Dean drawls overhead. “I got a pretty clear memory of you shoving a blade into my chest, so…”

Castiel hesitates. It seems right to give himself that second, a moment to change his mind in case conscience kicks in.

Thousands of angels lost and homeless; his own grace ripped away; Kevin’s death; Dean’s brush with death and his stint as a demon.

The yawning chasm of emptiness that had opened in his chest when he believed Dean dead propels him. He puts the gun to Metatron’s forehead, fists a hand too-tight in his hair to hold him in place, and pulls the trigger. Crack, boom.

Metatron dies with one more excuse poised on his lips.

There’s blood, a lot of it all at once. The smell of it hits Castiel hard and he lurches as he drags himself to his feet, clutching at Dean’s elbow. All the muscles of Dean’s arm are tense and he hisses in Castiel’s ear, “We gotta go _now_.”

Trusting Dean yet again, Castiel goes, the sound of the gunshot ringing hollow and final in his ears.

 

“No idea what I did,” Dean says, going so quickly that his words nearly bump up into each other. “I just knew there was no amount of fast talking that was gonna get us out of coldblooded murder on the roof of Tokyo Tower. It’s gonna be a crazy scandal when they find the body, sure, but if they ain’t got any witnesses…”

While Castiel had been hunched over Metatron, Dean had been grabbing hold of the little vial of Castiel’s grace and, in one of those bold and ridiculous moves that has always made him such an effective hunter, gambled on nothing but his own willpower. “I dunno, I just concentrated,” he says now, “and hoped really hard that whatever mojo Metatron had been sucking outta this stuff wasn’t used up. He was human, too, so I figured I could at least keep up what he started.”

And so the tourists had remained frozen, unseeing and unhearing, until Dean and Castiel had scurried their way down the back way and burst free of the Tower itself. They may see _mysterious suicide found atop Tokyo Tower_ on the news any second now, but as far as anyone there is concerned, they had vanished by the time the body burst into inexplicably sudden view.

Castiel perches at the end of the bed. His hands are cold. He should have kept the leather jacket on, bloodstains be damned.

Dean stops where he’s pacing. He leans down and puts his own hands, which are as warm as ever, on Castiel’s shoulders. “Chin up.”

Stunned into obedience, Castiel lifts his chin.

“That motherfucker deserved it. And that’s not—” Looking briefly disgusted, Dean flexes the fingers of his right hand against Castiel’s shoulder, deliberate so that he’ll feel the motions. “That’s not my gang tattoo, or whatever, talking. I thought that guy deserved to die from the second he tricked you out of your grace.”

Castiel laughs, a shaky exhale of breath more than anything else. “That was a long time ago.”

“Not that long. And then I was such a dick—whatever, man. I think you earned that gunshot, ’s all I’m saying.” Dean takes a hand away so he can rummage in his pocket, then hold up the chain that’s still holding Castiel’s grace. It’s bright, bright light, rolling around in the bottom of the cylindrical container.

“May I—?”

“Hey, it’s yours. Chow down.”

Castiel takes it, holds it between both his palms. The warmth distracts him at first, the way it buzzes in his ears. The resonance is just right, perfectly attuned to the rushing of the blood in his veins. That’s probably why he doesn’t notice what’s missing right away.

“Dean.”

“Cas?”

Suddenly shaken, Castiel shoves the vial back into Dean’s ready hand. “This isn’t—there’s no point in me taking this back.”

“ _What_?”

It’s a good thing Castiel returned the vial to Dean already, because his hands are shaking. “It’s not all there. He must have—during the spell to close Heaven. He must have used some of it. Or maybe… it doesn’t matter. It can’t give me back all my powers.”

Dean’s forehead knocks against Castiel’s, light but firm. “Isn’t some better than none?”

Castiel’s aware that he’s being stubborn. He squeezes his eyes shut and shakes his head. “I don’t want it. Not like this. Not—not diminished by him. I don’t _need_ it to live.”

Dean makes a hum of acknowledgment, touching his mouth to the space between Castiel’s eyes. “I guess it’s your freaky celestial mojo.” He drops the chain back around his neck and tucks it into the collar of his T-shirt, out of sight. “Guessin’ it wouldn’t be enough for my tattoo removal appointment?”

Castiel’s laugh is a little reluctant. “I don’t think so. I was never sure of how grace would interact with the Mark, but—it was certainly better than a plain old human interacting with the Mark. Sorry, Dean.”

“I dunno, can’t be any worse than this plain old human interacting with this thing.” Dean taps his fingernail against the vial through the fabric of his shirt. It clinks.

“You,” Castiel says, “are not just a plain old human.”

The side of Dean’s mouth lifts and his eyelids lower. “Pretty sure I could say the same thing for you, pal. Grace or no grace.”

Castiel forces another laugh, feels his shoulders slump. The tension doesn’t leave, exactly, but it drains downwards along the sides of his spine. “I don’t want it. Not like that.”

Dean makes a thoughtful sound under his breath, acknowledgment without agreement. “Look, it’s been a pretty shitty day. What do you say we get some room service and hit the hay?”

 

It shouldn’t come as a surprise, but it does: Castiel doesn’t sleep. He can’t sleep.

Under the thin cotton of Dean’s T-shirt, the remnants of his grace glow. The little container tugs at his consciousness—this thing that used to be the essence of him. It’s not anymore, he thinks. He can’t be sure. But it _was_ , before he developed a conscience or a soul or whatever it is that holds the remnants of his self together. It was supposed to help Dean, to give Castiel a sense of purpose back, to show him the right way to go.

It’s a faint light, only enough to light Dean’s face from below. It throws his cheekbones into sharp relief, the strength of his chin and the rolls of soft skin underneath. His lips are full and slightly chapped.

Castiel rolls away, trying not to look.

Barely moments later, Dean follows, wrapping an arm around Castiel’s middle and pressing a sloppy kiss to the side of his neck. He grunts something that might be a greeting, nosing up to Castiel’s ear where his breath tickles the tufts of hair curling there.

“Can’t sleep?” Dean’s words slur, thick with his own sleepiness. His voice is so low that it kindles some sort of automatic shudder deep in Castiel’s belly.

“I’m surprised you could.” Castiel sucks in a quick breath and lets it out like a punch to the gut.

“Years of practice,” Dean says, a lilt of sarcasm there that doesn’t ring true. He’s being serious; he’s honed the skill of sleeping through all variety of trauma over decades of his life, starting at the age of four.

“There was a lot of blood,” Castiel says.

“Yeah.” Dean exhales against Castiel’s neck and shoulder, the space where the borrowed T-shirt is slipping to the side and exposing his skin. “Yeah. Been there, buddy.”

Shame flushes through Castiel’s nerves. He should be accustomed to violence by now. “I know.”

“Not like you ever get used to it.” Dean’s mouth opens warm and humid against Castiel’s spine; he tugs at Castiel’s shirt until he can graze teeth against bare skin, sending little shivers down Castiel’s flanks. “You did the right thing, okay? Not sure how much that counts for coming from a guy like me, but I fucking mean it, okay?”

Dean’s proximity floods Castiel’s awareness. Thick thighs pressed against his own, fingertips pooling heat in little spangles along his ribs. Predictably, his cock twitches against the fly of his boxers.

“Dean,” he murmurs.

Apparently, his tone gets his meaning across. Dean chuckles lowly in the hollow below his ear and tugs him closer still, against the growing hardness between Dean’s own legs. “Well, hi, Cas.”

It’s possible that using Dean’s easy physicality as a distraction is a bad idea, but Castiel can hardly be expected to resist when Dean is working a hand up under his shirt, pinching at his nipples, making noises of approval so close to his throat. Dean is big and attentive and sweet even as his teeth are sinking into the skin of Castiel’s shoulder, his palm sliding down to cup Castiel’s cock and coax it into hardness with barely a brush of his rough and capable fingers.

He gasps as Dean drags two fingers against that spot below the head of his cock, jerks his hips up in a small, slightly desperate motion. “Dean,” he says again.

“I gotcha.” Dean wraps his hand around Castiel, flicks his wrist up so that Castiel moans, the sound loud and unabashed within the walls of their room. The bed’s just big enough for the two of them, the mattress and pillows harder than either of them are used to, but all the little discomforts fall away when Dean nudges his knee between Castiel’s legs and traces careful touches against the overheated heaviness of his balls; the space just behind them, soft and sensitive.

It feels _so_ good. Ridiculously good. Castiel draws in a sobbing whimper of a breath and rocks backward into the welcoming valley of Dean’s hips, the desert-hot mesa of his erection.

“Ah,” Dean bites out, “fuck. Fuck, Cas, can I—”

They’re lit only by the faint luminosity of Castiel’s grace, Dean’s eyes tinted nearly blue. He rolls on top of Castiel, both hands braced under Castiel’s shirt.

Castiel breathes, too quickly and too shallowly. Dean grins down at him, peels his shirt off as if it’s the obvious next step when Castiel can barely think ten seconds into the future. Can barely think of anything but the insistent weight between his legs and the thoughtful intentness to Dean’s gaze.

Finally he realizes that Dean is awaiting an answer. “Yeah,” he says, “yeah, _yes_. Dean. You can do anything you want.”

“I’m kinda hoping you’re gonna want it too,” Dean says before he dips downward, sleek and purposeful in the openness between Castiel’s legs. He mouths at Castiel’s cock through the cotton of his boxers for a moment, only long enough to wet the fabric and send Castiel’s spine bowing in senseless pursuit of more.

Castiel moans, lets his legs fall farther open. Dean makes short work of his boxers, drops them off the side of the bed, and dives in.

He’s fearless, giving and enthusiastic. He laps at Castiel’s balls, up the seam of them and the shaft of his erection, the glancing hint of teeth against the slit making Castiel’s hands clutch hard at the sheets to either side of his head.

“Oh—”

“Mmhmm.” Dean hums and Castiel shudders with the way it rumbles through him.

“Don’t stop.”

“Wasn’t plannin’ on it.” There’s the barest moment of hesitation, and then Dean’s hands are lifting the backs of Castiel’s thighs, strong and sure. The air-conditioned room is cold, but only for a moment; Dean’s mouth replaces it, an open-mouthed kiss to his hole. Castiel stiffens with shock and arousal.

“ _Dean_ ,” he says.

Dean makes another humming noise, lower; he curls his tongue, the tip of it pressing in and then in again, and it’s unreasonable that it should feel like this but it does, like Castiel is being flayed and opened to the world. Like Dean is plucking at every nerve ending with each swipe of his tongue, each spit-slick kiss. Castiel shivers under his ministrations, fists balling tight in the hotel sheets.

“Feels good, right?” Dean murmurs the question into the crease of Castiel’s thigh.

“Please,” Castiel says, too high and unsteady. Dean looks up and his eyes gleam bright in the darkness. “Please,” he repeats, “don’t ask stupid questions.”

“Gee,” Dean says around a laugh, “okay, bossy.”

But he bends to his work, licking Castiel open with single-minded ferocity. Maybe he’s skilled and maybe he’s not, but Castiel’s not sure that it matters when Dean does it with such fervor, his thumbs rubbing soothing circles into the meat of Castiel’s thighs in counterpoint to the way his tongue pushes deeper and deeper inside, the sucking kisses that curl Castiel’s toes and send sweat beading its way down his chest where his nipples are taut.

His cock is so hard it nearly hurts, but this isn’t the way he wants it to go. He threads his fingers into Dean’s hair, taking handfuls where he can, and tugs.

“Stop,” he gets out.

Dean’s head pops up again. The obscured glow of Castiel’s grace lights the stubble at his jowls and under the arches of his cheekbones, and Castiel’s chest aches for a split-second.

“Cas.” Dean taps his chin against the soft inside of Castiel’s knee. “What’s up?”

Castiel’s jaw works. He swallows, then looks Dean in the eye. “I want you to fuck me.”

The shiver that works its way through Dean, from his shoulders down to his hips, is lovely. “Oh, man. You could stand to say that again.”

 _Ask and ye shall receive_ , Dean had said a handful of nights ago. “I really want you to fuck me, Dean. I’ll ask nicely if that would make it easier for you.”

The set of Dean’s mouth goes soft, pliant. His throat works, his expression thick with desire, and it makes Castiel feel—good. Powerful, in fact, even as the source of all his former power hangs around Dean’s neck.

“You don’t have to ask more’n that,” Dean says. His lips shine wetly in the dim light of the grace. “Just hang in there, okay?”

It doesn’t take so much. Japan had proved an excellent place to purchase high-quality lubrication and Castiel is open and wanting already, loosened by the boundless enthusiasm of Dean’s mouth and tongue. Dean’s hands are beautiful, though, dexterous and capable of every kind of touch from violence to tenderness, and Castiel luxuriates in the easiness with which Dean’s fingers reach inside him, light him up with pleasure from the inside out. Dean has lost his own sleep shirt and boxers, and the muscles of his arm and shoulder flex as he crooks his fingers inside Castiel.

Dean peppers Castiel’s face with kisses; the corner of his mouth, the soft and tired skin under his eyes, the furrows in his brow. When Castiel shivers and moans, Dean kisses the sound out of his mouth.

“Dean,” Castiel growls. He slings an arm around Dean’s neck, dragging him in for a longer kiss, harder, more teeth. He digs his teeth into Dean’s lower lip. “Don’t take this the wrong way. This feels incredible. Quit fucking around.”

“Jesus fuck,” Dean breathes.

“Come on.” Castiel lifts his hips, tilting them up. The motion shoves Dean’s fingers deeper, and they graze his prostate so he moans, the sound incidental but apparently exactly as inviting as he’d hoped.

Dean’s fingers slip free with a slick noise. Castiel hauls in a lungful of air so deep and overhasty that his chest burns, and then Dean is lining himself up, light pressure at Castiel’s hole.

Castiel digs his fingers into Dean’s back between his shoulder blades and pulls. Dean bites back a gasp and then he’s sliding in, in, the glide smooth and easy until he’s all the way home. It’s entirely possible that it hurts some, but Castiel’s determined not to notice it, not when he’s stretched and full and Dean is panting against the side of his neck.

“It’s good,” Castiel assures him.

Dean shifts. He pushes Castiel’s legs up a little further, curls a hand around the inside of Castiel’s knee until he slips still further in and Castiel’s vision sparks white for a moment. “Fuck,” Dean hisses.

“Yes,” Castiel says, reaching for him anew. “Yes—Dean.”

Dean rocks his hips, one short thrust. A burst of friction and Castiel squirms, trying to angle himself for more, for better—and when it hits, when Dean’s cock drags against that perfect space inside him, he has to bite the back of his own wrist to muffle the sound that claws out of his throat, the stuttering impatience as he rolls his own hips up and asks for more, again, harder. He kisses Dean, all teeth.

He’s used to how readily Dean gives that there’s only blank confusion for the first moment after Dean goes still.

“I said _yes_.”

Slow, his brows drawn together, Dean curls his hand around Castiel’s cock.

Castiel makes a tight little sound, wanting. “Please don’t stop.”

“I’m just—” Dean’s moving too slowly, the fullness of where he’s seated inside Castiel so distracting that Castiel almost doesn’t follow the motion as Dean reaches for the chain around his neck and lifts the vial with two fingertips. The chain, something cheap and painted silver, glints.

“Don’t,” Castiel starts.

“No, wait,” Dean says. “Look, I know you want this back. Hey—take a look at this.” He taps a fingertip to the side of the glass, and a tendril of grace leaps toward the point of contact like lightning to a conducting rod.

The inside of Castiel’s chest feels brittle at the sight. When Dean traces his touch along the glass, the light follows, pulsing with weak but unmistakable excitement.

“Dean,” he tries again, “I don’t—it won’t be the same.”

Dean answers him with another quick, hard thrust, and then one more, the angle so close to perfect that Castiel’s eyes roll back into his head for a blissful moment. He arches closer, his fingernails digging into the skin of Dean’s back.

“Cas,” Dean says, “c’mon, look. It likes me.”

“No shit, Sherlock,” Castiel grits out.

“I can tell you want it.” Dean touches his free hand to Castiel’s cheek, stroking along the hinge of his jaw. “I’m not gonna make you or anything, I just—I can tell. The way you’re being right now.”

That deserves Castiel’s attention, and so he looks back. Dean’s tongue wets his lower lip and blood gleams there. Castiel must have done that; he must have done it without noticing, desperate and reckless as he strove to forget himself, what he’d done, the loss of half his grace at the hands of a megalomaniacal idiot.

He opens his hand, propping himself up on his elbows. It changes the angle again, just some, and Dean sucks in a breath through his teeth, a reminder that holding back must be just as difficult for him as it is for Castiel. Dean drops the vial into his hand, the glass fever-warm against his palm.

It’s his, Castiel’s, and it’s alien to him. Dean is right—he does want it. He wants the power to do what he can to save Dean.

“Bad timing,” Dean says, with the grace to look and sound sheepish, “I know. I guess I thought I could just—I dunno. It felt weird. You’re not all here.”

Dean had looked beautiful with Castiel’s grace around his neck. Maybe it can reside there again one day.

There’s time for an apology, but Castiel would rather use that time for something concrete, for once in his existence. He pops the cap off the vial with his thumb and opens his mouth.

The rush is immediate and visceral, a braid of supernova-bright light that arrows in on Castiel and dives for him without hesitation, without giving him a chance to change his mind. If taking Theo’s grace for himself was like knocking back a dozen shots of drugstore vodka all at once, reclaiming his own is a long drink of cold water after weeks of trekking through the desert.

Dean burns so, so brightly above him, inside him, the parameters of his soul loose and open with the way they’re joined and the way Dean is watching him, his love crisp and clear and oh, Castiel can hardly stand to look. He covers his face with a hand, but he can still see it, Dean’s soul reaching for him. He can hear Dean’s heart, every precious beat, and listen to Dean’s pulse vibrant and rich through Dean’s veins. Dean’s cock thick in him, the blood pounding there as well.

There are other things. Hundreds of people populating this hotel, travelers and tourists and wayward spouses. Thousands—millions—of people in the city below them, fading with distance; that’s a hallmark of his weakened power, he supposes. His shoulder blades itch, and he’ll need to find out the state of his wings, too.

Now, though. Dean holding his face in his hands, pressing kiss after kiss to his mouth, nudging Castiel’s own hand out of the way only to smile in uncomplicated relief when Castiel looks back at him. “Thought you short-circuited for a sec there.”

“I—” Castiel doesn’t have the words. He kisses Dean’s mouth in turn and lets the glancing touch heal the wound he’d inflicted minutes before.

With his senses honing in on Dean once more, the Mark of Cain’s influence makes itself obvious. A knot of darkness pulsing red with anger, tucked away deep in the light of his soul. As if he can tell that Castiel is looking there, Dean clenches the fingers of his right hand where he’s hanging onto the back of Castiel’s neck.

The Mark may be ugly, but it pales in comparison to the rest of Dean. Castiel missed this, badly. He kisses Dean again and tightens his muscles so that Dean sucks in a gasp, presses his forehead to Castiel’s temple.

“It’s so good,” Castiel finishes at last, “to feel your light again. Dean. You’re radiant.”

Dean’s laugh rumbles rough into Castiel’s ear, the side of his neck. “Shut up.”

“Maybe you should make me.”

“Goddammit,” Dean breathes. “Walked right into that one.” But he shifts, enough that his cock drags a little inside Castiel, sweet friction so that Castiel shivers and rocks his hips upward.

“Dean. Fuck me.”

And Dean does, hanging onto Castiel’s hips as he rears back, up, and then drives himself back inside, so slow that Castiel feels every inch of him.

“Again,” Castiel demands, fisting a hand in Dean’s hair again, and Dean makes a broken noise and gives Castiel what he wants. His soul is an over-bright haze of pleasure, neurons and synapses firing wild signals of goodness and pleasure and desire. Castiel whimpers, urges him into another kiss that’s longer and messier so he can taste Dean’s moan, swallow the shape of it, with the next thrust.

“God _dammit_ ,” Dean says again, mouth open as he pants against Castiel’s lower lip. “Shit, you feel so fucking—”

“Don’t stop.”

The weight of Dean in him is so good it’s almost too much, but he can’t bear the thought of losing it. Dean’s picked up a tentative rhythm, growing quicker and quicker, one that nearly echoes the beat of his heart as it rings in Castiel’s ears and grace, and when Castiel arches into one particularly exquisite thrust, the head of his cock slips just right against his prostate and he throws his head back, gripping tight at Dean to keep him there, _right_ there. Castiel’s shaking, awash in the simple pleasure of his body and the full-tilt crash of Dean’s soul against his grace, how they reach for each other, how they tangle up in each other.

He’d meant to draw this out for longer, to luxuriate in the firework bursts of pleasure each time Dean fills him up anew. But _oh_ , it’s everything all at once, Dean murmuring _fuck, shit, Cas, babe, feels so fuckin’ good_ against his collarbones and the echo chamber of sensation each time he taps into the shuddery heat of Dean wanting him, how when they’re like this all wrapped up together Dean doesn’t bother to filter or disguise it. And he’s not exactly human anymore, but he’s not exactly an angel either—he’s weak, he wants, he’s overwhelmed.

“Touch me,” he says, “please,” but when Dean reaches a slightly clumsy hand between them and fits his hand over Castiel’s erection, that’s the destruction of his remaining self-control. Castiel bites back something close to a sob, his spine curving, and comes all over both their stomachs, the pounding tattoo of pleasure so loud in his grace that he could swear the room itself is pulsing in time with his orgasm.

“Holy,” Dean says on a high-pitched exhale. It’s just a phrase, and Castiel knows the second word would have been _shit_ , but he’s inclined to agree with just the start of it; there must be something sacred here, fleeting though that something may be, in the overwarm space their bodies make as they bow toward each other.

Castiel kisses Dean’s upper lip, his lower lip, his reddened mouth. “You can come now,” he says. “I want to feel it.” He draws the fingertips of one hand down Dean’s sweat-damp chest, fingernails brushing against one stiff pink nipple. A small noise tears out of the back of Dean’s throat.

It takes very little. Barely three thrusts, Dean’s fingers digging into the muscles of Castiel’s thighs as he bends down over him and breathes ragged moans against the hollow of his throat. He comes with the backs of Castiel’s knees thrown over his elbows, Castiel folded up so far that he’s passingly grateful for his grace solely as an agent of superhuman flexibility.

Dean’s head stays bowed, the hairs at the back of his neck dark with sweat, sticking up in endearing little spikes. Castiel ruffles them with his fingers, amazed at the way his heart swells so big he’s certain it’ll burst right out of his chest. He can feel each twitch and jerk of Dean’s cock inside him, the hot spill of orgasm and Dean’s pleasure.

“Je- _sus_ ,” Dean says, giving the word at least two additional syllables as he relaxes his grip and slumps forward onto Castiel’s chest. The angles of his shoulder blades make Castiel want to wrap both arms around his middle and hold him there, stroking the lingering tension out of his erector spinae.

“Just Castiel.”

“Asshole,” Dean says without any fervor. He noses at Castiel’s sternum, shifting gingerly so that he slips free with a slick sound and Castiel sighs, rubbing his thumb back and forth between two of Dean’s vertebrae. “How you feelin’, Cas? Okay? Juiced up?”

“Strange,” Castiel answers truthfully. “Good, I think. It’s—it’s like before the apocalypse that we stopped, but it’s final. My grace isn’t ebbing away or being denied me. It’s just… not all here.”

“You got a percentage? Like, what, are you sixty-eight percent angel or somethin’ now?”

Castiel laughs reluctantly and closes his eyes. The vastness of Tokyo tugs at his awareness, asking him to pay it attention, but he’d rather listen to the rush of blood in Dean’s arteries. A little clogged, he thinks, but better since he retooled Dean’s circulatory system as he pulled him out of Hell. “It doesn’t work that way.”

“Yeah.” Dean’s voice and tone soften. “Yeah, I’m just being a jerk. Sorry.”

Not offended in the least, Castiel turns blindly so that their noses bump and rub together. He can actually feel the lightning flicker of brief happiness in Dean’s soul as Dean smiles.

“Like I said, it just feels—weird. Not bad, but weird. I hope I’ll have time to get used to it.”

“Me too, pal.” Dean rolls off of Castiel and to the side, spreading his limbs across the remaining space in the bed. The sheets are a mess. “We can go home in the morning. Assuming I make it all the way across the Pacific without vomiting up my innards.”

Castiel’s aware that the air is cold, but the knowledge seems farther away than it did before. He’s lit from within now. Still, he turns, curling himself against Dean’s side. There’s lubrication smeared across Dean’s hips and thighs, and he cleans it up with a quick touch. Dean shivers under the attention, his jaw cracking open in a long yawn.

“You okay if I catch a couple winks?” Dean scrubs at his face with the heel of his palm.

“More than.” There are boundaries Castiel needs to test; edges and limits to his abilities that he’d rather explore under the cover of darkness, without Dean’s eyes on him. Sleep’s faded into the background of his nexus of needs, a tempting luxury that he’ll be content to live without for a day or two.

Castiel pulls the sheets up over Dean’s already-dozing form and kisses his forehead. Dean directs a dazed smile up at him.

Tomorrow, Kansas. Castiel forces back the moment’s fear that familiar turf will ricochet his relationship with Dean back into the realm of the familiar: glances that prickled the back of his neck, touches that lingered too long, nothing more. He’s sore, muscles and between his legs, and he won’t heal that, not tonight. It’s a reminder that he and Dean have given more to each other, things that can’t be taken back.


	7. America, Pt. II

They make it out of baggage claim and customs with Dean still swaying a little in place, walking too deliberately, one foot in front of the other. It’s not until they come to the Impala in the parking garage that Dean lights back up, nearly sinking to his knees against the cement with his overwhelmed relief.

“Baby,” he coos, stroking the bumper with both hands. “Man, I was shit scared someone was gonna make off with you. Hell, I’d steal you if you weren’t already mine.”

The whisper of a spirit that’s formed inside the Impala stirs, leaning all its affection toward Dean. Sympathetic to that particular feeling, Castiel smiles.

He had put Dean to sleep for most of the flight, happy to spare him the misery of long hours suspended in the air over nothing but ocean. If his grace had felt up to it, he would have transported them home without the bureaucratic hassle of human air travel, but he’s not willing to test that on Dean.

Cross-legged on the floor of their hotel room in Tokyo, Castiel had pushed at the limits of his own power. He expanded the net of his awareness as far as it would go—once, he could have observed the world in its entirety, honing in on any person in any place. Now, it seems, he can only make it for about fifty miles before the knowledge fades away. A presence at the very edge of his limits had tugged, briefly, at his attention, but the sensation had faded too quickly for him to pursue her.

He listened to the rhythms of Dean’s sleep, to his REM cycles and the stirrings of his dreams. From a distance, those dreams were like a watercolor painting, beautiful and just indistinct enough to tempt Castiel, to make him wish he could dive into the landscape of Dean’s imagination and witness its absurdities for himself.

Once, Dean’s dream had turned nasty, and Castiel was grateful anew for the return of his grace as he smoothed fingertips across Dean’s forehead and chased the darkness away. Dean stirred, smacking his lips, and Castiel wanted for one wrenching moment to climb under the covers with him and hold him.

He had reached for Heaven, for what the Winchesters used to call angel radio, and been both sorry and relieved when he received responses from neither. Of course Castiel had known there would be parts of his grace missing—parts of what he used to consider fundamental to himself. The low vibrations of the Earth and its faculties are there, but they’re fuzzier, less distinct than they had been when he was fresh-faced and stationed on solid ground for the first time in his existence.

As a human, he’d only just started to grasp how not to feel _less_. In that room in Tokyo, tattered wings spread and lit with the neon of the eternally busy city, he had welcomed the sensation of _more_ with open arms. And it had felt good, cupping tiny flames between his palms, feeding them with nothing but energy from within, and watching them grow until he had allowed them to gutter and fade.

“You know,” Castiel says, touching the Impala’s hood, “I’m glad to see this car, too. I didn’t realize how attached I had become.”

Dean glances up with his grin still in place. “Yeah, that’s ’cause you’re a Winchester. It’s basically a blood pact.”

“Oh, am I,” Castiel murmurs, but there’s nothing he can do to disguise the pleasure-flush rising in his cheeks. Dean is sincere; he can tell, the way Dean’s soul hovers bright and fond with most of Dean’s awareness focused on Castiel himself.

“Duh.” They’re alone in the parking garage, but Castiel likes to believe that Dean would have kissed him like this no matter what, hand flat against the back of the leather jacket they’d brought home to Kansas all the way from the banks of the Seine. “Now let’s get us back to Winchester home base.”

 

“You two,” Charlie says with her fists tight at her sides and her eyes bright, “are assholes.”

“Yeah,” Dean says.

“I believe you’re right,” Castiel says.

Charlie huffs an irritated breath and pulls them both into a hug, one arm around each of their middles. She’s not quite big enough, and it’s awkward, and it feels like homecoming. Castiel closes his eyes. Charlie’s hair smells like Dean’s shampoo.

“She’s right.” Sam, his arrival heralded by heavy footfalls as he stomps his way up the stairs to the bunker’s entrance. He’s well-rested, Castiel notes. Better than he’d been in weeks before they left. Maybe Dean’s absence proved good for him. “I’m putting you guys on dishwashing duty for, like… probably ever.”

“Shut up,” Dean says gruffly as he yanks Sam into the mass of arms that they’re calling a group hug.

“I can’t believe how long it took you to turn on your damn phone,” Sam grumbles. He wraps his arms around the whole collection of them and hangs on tightly.

Two boxes of pizza delivery and a six-pack of Dean’s favorite local beer later, the scene acquires an unmistakable familiarity. Dean keeps laughing, teasing Sam for everything from the length of his hair to the toppings he chose for his half of one of their pizzas, and every time Sam rolls his eyes and calls Dean a jerk, the atmosphere warms further.

This time, Charlie’s movements are easier—her bullet wound is well on the road to healing, and when Castiel touches her shoulder for balance as he reaches for a fresh beer, he quietly gives her systems a little push to do their work faster. The camaraderie and relief wend their way into Castiel’s grace, suffusing him with contentment and encouraging him to accept the low-level buzz of intoxication the beer lends him while they talk or, as Dean would call it, _shoot the shit_.

“Guessin’ we’re gonna have to cut up about a couple dozen credit cards, huh?” Dean says to Sam, his nose wrinkling with preemptive distaste. “Gonna stick with crappy motels right here in home sweet America from now on.”

Taking a pull of his own beer, Sam shrugs. “I dunno, maybe only a half dozen. We had freakin’ amazing luck getting you guys cheap flights. I’d say you’ve got some kinda guardian angel, but…”

Castiel laughs lowly. “Not at the time. Not even now, exactly.”

Charlie rests her chin in one hand, watching Castiel. “You know, I don’t wanna pry or anything, but…” She cocks her head to the side and flashes a hopeful little grin.

“I’d tell you more if I could. Metatron had my grace, but not all of it. Some, I suspect, was used for his spell. The rest… well, you two saw the evidence of how he chose to amuse himself.”

“Ew,” Charlie says.

“You’re tellin’ me.” Dean’s hand disappears under the table, rests against Castiel’s denim-clad thigh.

“What’s left—is it going to run out?” Sam, spearing a broccoli stem on his fork (another reason for Dean to mock him, _eating pizza with a fork, seriously, Sammy_ ) and guiding it to his mouth.

“I don’t think so.” Castiel rolls his shoulders, and the dormant impressions of his folded wings twitch and shudder as if he’s summoned them. “It’s my grace; it’s meant to be with me. It knows me.”

Dean squeezes his leg just above his knee. “Either way, I gotta tell you, it felt pretty awesome watching Cas take that fucker down. Without any of his mojo back yet, remember.”

Charlie grins again and tips her beer bottle toward Castiel. “Can’t wait for the big-screen adaptation.”

 

Dean’s bed smells like him. Cheap deodorant, leather, and smoke. Stripped to nothing but boxers, Castiel stretches across the memory foam and takes in lungful after lungful. It’s not only the smell—the whole room turns gladder and airier with Dean’s presence. It’s missed him.

His shoulders itch again and there’s no use denying them. It’s him and Dean, determined to claim one night of triumphant homecoming before they resume their battles with Rowena and Crowley, before the weakening hold of Castiel’s shoddy spell snaps for good and the Mark is devouring Dean’s humanity full-tilt once again.

What Castiel wouldn’t give for access to Daniel and the naga’s library again. Perhaps he’ll need to make a cross-continental trip once he’s mastered the parameters of his grace.

Speaking of. Castiel’s wings pour out behind him, the sound of rustling feathers heralding their appearance. He hasn’t wanted to look too closely back in Tokyo, but now he sits up, hugging his knees to his chest and turning his head.

Bedraggled would be a kind description, he thinks with a wince. Feathers missing in great chunks, their many absences obvious even in the indistinct inkiness of how the wings manifest on the physical plane.

“Whoa.”

There’s steam lingering in the air around Dean, whose jeans are unbuttoned and who has a towel draped around his shoulders. His chest is still pink with the heat of his shower.

Castiel hadn’t sensed him coming. That’s another stinging reminder of the faultiness of his powers. He tenses, ready to fold his wings away, but Dean’s expression stays open and interested. He steps closer, lifting a tentative hand without touching Castiel.

“You weren’t kidding when you said these puppies had seen a few battles.”

“You should have seen the other guy,” Castiel offers.

Dean laughs obligingly. “I did. He got his brains blown out.”

Castiel’s wings shift and flutter. They stretch toward Dean, who raises a hand and lets the backs of his knuckles brush a few of the remaining feathers.

“Man,” Dean mutters, “that is so weird and cool. Here I thought these were just for making bad guys and unruly humans want to piss their pants.”

“They’re for all sorts of things. My true form, when I had it—there were six wings. I’m… greatly diminished, in comparison.”

“Like I said, chicks dig scars.” Dean looks down, then, at his own scar, the Mark of Cain still crimson against the pale skin of his inner arm. “Most scars, anyway.”

Castiel takes hold of Dean’s wrist and slides two fingertips up the softness of his arm until he hits the Mark. It’s raised, rough to the touch; Castiel realizes this is the first time that he’s touched it on purpose with no endgame beyond feeling the texture, testing the weight of it against Dean’s soul. Dean tends to avoid it as well. Maybe it’s the first time the Mark has been touched with intent in days.

A quick brush of grace confirms his fears. The spell’s last tendrils of power clutch at the Mark, but they’re weakening.

“Kinda ugly, huh,” Dean says quietly.

“A little,” Castiel admits. He presses his thumb against the Mark and feels it give reluctantly under his touch. The blackened energy of it makes his grace want to recoil, but he refuses. It’s part of Dean until such time as he can work out a solution, and he won’t allow himself that disgust. “We’ll get rid of it.”

“God, I hope so.” Dean’s eyelashes lower, a few lingering droplets of shower water clinging there.

Castiel tips forward, spreads his wings wider for balance, and kisses Dean. With intent, with reassurance, with such force that the towel slips off Dean’s shoulders as Castiel’s hands hook around the still-damp back of his neck.

A trail of golden hairs leads into the half-undone zipper of Dean’s jeans. Castiel traces his fingertips along it, slips his hand under the waistband of Dean’s boxers, and smiles against Dean’s mouth when Dean gasps a little, half-stumbling forward into the touch.

“Come here,” he says, and Dean does.

The last time he had had Dean stripped bare and yearning, Castiel had been bombarded with such a flood of sensation that he hadn’t had the luxury of savoring the smaller details. He vows to make up for it this time, and so he pulls Dean to him, lowers him to the bed, curves his wings around them both so that there’s nothing but soft lamplight filtering through and Dean’s parted lips, wide eyes, gleaming bright and tempting under Castiel’s scrutiny.

Castiel wants to catalogue everything. The little jump and skip in Dean’s pulse as he sucks one pink nipple into his mouth; the longing ache of Dean’s whole being as Castiel smiles up at him from where he’s poised with Dean’s jeans halfway down his thighs. Dean is not quiet in bed. Far from it—he lets shaky breaths punch out of his chest, keeps up a steady stream of curses wherein he calls Castiel all sorts of ridiculous endearments. _Babe_ and _sweetheart_ and _Cas, Cas, Cas_ every time Castiel drops a fresh open-mouthed kiss to the trembling skin of his thighs.

It may be that Castiel doesn’t have practical experience, but he can read the electric signals of Dean’s brain and the grasping desires of his soul. He swallows Dean in one easy motion, his skin tasting clean and still warm from his shower. Tongues at the slit, drinks down the slick salt taste of precome each time Dean whines and twists his fingers into the sheets, leaving little hollows in the memory foam of his mattress.

“You look so,” Dean pants, “look so goddamn beautiful like this, fuck.” Castiel’s not sure if he means the wings or the mouth around his cock, but he hums approval either way.

Dean’s hips jerk. Castiel wants to smirk, but his mouth is full.

“Dean,” he says as he draws back, a thoughtful murmur. Dean shudders in answer. Castiel has a theory, and he wants to test it. “Dean,” he repeats, kissing the spit-slick rise of Dean’s erection with his mouth open, “ _mi tesoro_.”

Dean gasps, shudders again. Just as Castiel had hoped.

“ _Mo chroí_ ,” he tries, nipping the outlines of the Irish phrase into the meat of Dean’s thigh.

“Cas,” Dean grits out. He’s trembling.

Castiel is right, then. He’d noticed it as they traveled, the lingering interest in Dean’s expression as Castiel’s lips formed non-English phrases with the fluidity of fluency. “You like this,” he says, smiling into Dean’s hip. The skin there smells of clean sweat. “Language.”

“I just, uh.” Dean’s breath rushes out of him so quickly that it ruffles Castiel’s hair.

“I’m not criticizing you.” Castiel finds himself smiling again. “ _Mon petit chou_ ,” he adds. It’s for his own amusement, but the small tremor that runs through Dean’s tendons calls his focus back to the task at hand. Dean, hard and leaking, his fingers twitching with arousal at each fresh endearment.

“ _Meri jaan_ ,” Castiel says, heartfelt. Dean’s life has given him life, after all. He plans to keep Dean here with him, whole and wholly himself. Whatever it takes. And for now, he’s sincere in each phrase that spills from his mouth against Dean’s cock, which strains toward the timber of Castiel’s voice. _Dorogoy_ and _dragi moj_ , because Dean is dear to him. _Min älskade_. Dean is nothing if not beloved.

By the time Dean bites his own lip and sobs through his orgasm, coming down Castiel’s waiting throat, the Mark’s barely holding onto its influence over Dean. Dean strokes the back of Castiel’s neck with both hands, rocking up into his mouth in small, overwhelmed motions that make Castiel’s chest and erection throb.

Dean tugs Castiel up and up until they’re kissing again, bruised mouths open and breathing desperation into each other. Castiel’s so worked up, so painfully _fond_ , that when his cock slides into the notch of warmth between Dean’s hip and thigh, it takes only a moment’s friction and pressure before his orgasm hits him in turn, washing blissful and clean through his body and then his grace.

Only then does Castiel fold his wings back into the ether. Dean murmurs a cursory protest and pulls Castiel’s now-bare back up against his front, hooking his chin over Castiel’s shoulder.

“How does it feel?” Castiel dares to ask, touching Dean’s elbow to demonstrate his meaning.

“Mmph.” Dean kisses the slope of Castiel’s neck. “Quiet.”

It’s a good thing, that moment of respite, because the spell unravels and comes loose in the night, and the Mark has not taken kindly to being shackled.

 

“Don’t touch me.”

“Dean—”

“Don’t,” Dean repeats, a growl edging his voice. His forehead is pressed to his knees, his fingers digging so tightly into the flesh of his own thighs that his knuckles are a stark white.

Sam and Castiel exchange helpless looks. Charlie’s hunched over her laptop a few yards away, Googling or researching or _something_ in frantic search of some solution, even if only a stopgap. The spell won’t work twice, and Dean has already threatened them with disembowelment if they so much as mention looking up anything to do with the Book of the Damned.

“I’ll be okay,” Dean says. His voice is tight, and none of them are convinced, least of all Dean himself. Castiel can tell. “I just—kinda got used to the way it was. Not used to it being so damn pissed at me anymore.”

Dean had awoken in the slate-gray early hours, wrenching upright with such violent force that Castiel had been jostled from his half-sleep. The smell of Dean’s sweat had turned sour, his heart thumping so fast in Castiel’s ears and grace that he had feared Dean was entering cardiac arrest.

It had been nothing so mundanely treatable. Dean had curled in on himself, clutching the crimson Mark on his arm and panting. Ragged, terrified. Castiel was nearly as scared.

“The spell,” Castiel started.

“Not so fucking effective now,” Dean snarled. “Thanks for nothing.”

Castiel had reminded himself to breathe, and to forgive Dean. That Dean had accompanied him all the way around the world, that Dean had sheltered his grace for him, warmed him with his body and his care and with that leather jacket.

And then he had touched Dean’s shoulder, frozen him in place with an application of grace, and gone to get Sam and Charlie.

They’ve wrestled Dean into a chair, and he’s staying still of his own volition. He’s not lost to them, but he is frightened and angry.

“You sure about—” Sam, stubbly and gummy-eyed with the sleep he didn’t get.

“Don’t bring that fucking book near me,” Dean hisses.

“Dude.” Sam raises both hands, placating. “I wasn’t going to. It’s gone, remember? Just… asking.”

Something is nagging at Castiel, something half-forgotten—but also half-remembered. The Book of the Damned wouldn’t have helped Dean, he knows that much. Not without significant consequences. But there may be something else. He thinks of the little stolen notebook that’s still sandwiched somewhere in their luggage, waiting to be unpacked. Dreams and impressions insisting that he pay attention to them.

“Dean,” he says, “I’ll be right back. I—”

Dean’s chin tips up. His eyes are red-rimmed, their green sharp like gemstones. He waits, words unsaid hanging in the air between them.

Ignoring Sam and Charlie’s eyes on them, Castiel leans down and kisses Dean, a slow and gentle press of lips. Their mouths fit together for a moment, hinting at the potential for more, but Castiel stands up straight again and leaves Dean curled up in the war room chair he’s occupying.

Castiel has barely made it two feet past the bunker’s protective warding when he hears her. Heels tapping against the pavement of the highway, arms crossed, expression entirely unimpressed.

“I can’t believe how long this took you,” Kali says.

Castiel stares, and the pieces fall into place. She’s right; it’s absurd that it took him as long as it did to recognize her, though it’s been millennia since the two of them crossed paths. Gabriel had always liked to talk about her in hushed tones when no other angels were listening.

“I don’t,” she snaps, “like to be the first to get in touch. You know that.”

“Yes,” he says. “You’re right. I was—distracted. Very.”

“I think my hints were clear.” Her nails flash red in the midmorning light of Kansas, and there it is again, the impression that there are more arms, more hands, quick and deft in their dismissive gestures. And then Kali smiles. “Aren’t you glad I was there to help you out?”

Of course she’d been there all along. He can’t say for how long, or in what capacities, and he suspects she will never tell him all the details. The cheap flights, most likely. The hint that they needed to go to Tokyo is the most obvious.

“Yes,” he says again, clasping his hands behind his back. He would like her to know that he is grateful, and that it isn’t only a show. “Thank you. I take it you weren’t too fond of Metatron either.”

Kali’s laugh isn’t a pleasant sound. It slices through the air like a blade through a spinal cord. “Incompetent fuckhead. I was tempted to kill him myself more than once, but then your grace’s remnants would have been lost for good.”

Castiel chooses to rise to the bait. “And you care about my grace, or what’s left of it, because…?”

Kali nods her head toward the invisible barrier that’s keeping her out of the bunker. “I’d like an invitation inside.”

 

“A bargain,” Dean says wearily. “Yeah, great, because those have never blown up in our faces before.” He scrubs his face with his hands, so tired. Castiel wants badly to go to his side, to comfort him with touch.

Kali crosses her arms. She’s not, objectively speaking, tall, but she seems to tower over Dean anyway. “I am not part of the ridiculous clusterfuck that you three are so fond of tangling yourselves up in. I’m not asking for your soul or your brother’s soul or anything but your help.”

“My help.”

“Well.” Her lips quirk up, a twist of red. “Mostly your angel’s. An angel with even some of his grace is a valuable asset.”

Dean’s arms are crossed too, tight against his chest. He’s protecting himself. Castiel aches to stand by him, but Kali is eyeing him placidly.

“I can take that Mark off your arm,” Kali says plainly. “All I want is a guarantee that Crowley will die and that Rowena will be taken down. Preferably alive.” A pause, then she adds, “There’s some business I would like to settle with her.” Her voice lilts, and Castiel is abruptly curious, but he knows better than to ask.

Sam tries to cast a warning look their way, but both Dean and Castiel avoid making eye contact. Dean drums his fingers against his own upper arm. Castiel feels the Mark pulse, aware that it’s in jeopardy.

“Cas?” Dean says finally.

Castiel takes in a short breath and lets it out. It’s a human gesture, rhythmic, and it soothes him for a second or two. “You can’t deny that she helped us a great deal.”

“I’m not _evil_ ,” Kali points out. “I’m not anything but myself. The things I represent aren’t good, but they’re honest. Isn’t that better than witches and demons stringing you along for the hundredth time?”

“Not evil. Gee, ringing endorsement,” Dean says.

“Would _good_ be much of one?” Castiel feels a pang of betrayal, but it’s a valid point, he thinks. “Metatron represented the side of good, once upon a time.”

“Only a Sith deals in absolutes,” Charlie adds.

Dean shuts his eyes.

Castiel throws caution to the wind and crosses over to touch Dean’s temple, wiping beads of sweat away with his temple.

“Yes,” Dean says. “Yeah. Okay. God. Get this piece of shit off me.”

Some obscure tension drains from all four of them—Dean, Castiel, Sam, and Charlie, who’s watching Kali with a curious rosiness to her cheeks.

The process itself is almost embarrassingly anticlimactic: Kali draws Dean to her, brushes her lips against his forehead. Castiel watches in fascination as the darkness coiled deep in Dean’s soul thrashes, screams silently, and burns up in a wash of fire and a silent noise reminiscent of blades clashing and guns firing.

After, Dean is too drained to remember his self-consciousness. He sinks to his knees against the antique bunker carpet and buries his face in Castiel’s midsection, drawing in a series of deep breaths. Castiel feels his relief, his exhaustion, his fear that they’ve managed to screw themselves over yet again, and he buries his hands in Dean’s hair, holds him until he’s ready to detach.

“Well,” Kali says with clear amusement, “I see that wasn’t just a vacation thing.”

“Oh, Jesus.” Dean makes a noise caught between a groan and a laugh. “Don’t tell me you were watching us.” He pauses, then breaks into a crooked grin. “Actually, maybe you could tell me you were watching us. That’d be kinda—”

“Do not,” she says flatly, “make me put that Mark back on you so quickly.”

“Ooh,” Charlie intones. “Bossy.”

“Assertive,” Kali corrects her. “Now, not to break up this touching scene—congratulations, et cetera—but if we move quickly, I suspect we can apprehend a few of Rowena’s lackeys before they make it back to her with information on Crowley’s whereabouts. I’d like to work on separating the two of them.”

Dean takes one more deep breath. He reaches for Castiel’s hand and tangles their fingers together. Castiel’s grace, tattered and half-present and _his_ at last, hums with contentment at Dean’s proximity, the relief that’s tangible throughout the bunker, the scrubbed-clean effervescence of Dean’s soul.

“Sounds like a plan,” Sam says. From his pocket, he pulls a hair tie; Dean scoffs, but Sam ignores him as he pulls his hair back into a small tail at the back of his head. It suits him, Castiel thinks.

The dark light of Castiel’s wings flickers as he pulls them free and squares his shoulders. “Let’s go.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading. ♥


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